Joe Biden’s Prostate Cancer Diagnosis

Former president Joseph Biden has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. We at the PCRI are saddened by this news, as this kind of a diagnosis is a radically life altering event that sends ripples through the lives of those diagnosed, and the community that surrounds them. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Biden family as they battle this harsh diagnosis.

However, we find this particular diagnosis to be unsettling for reasons that may not initially be apparent to those outside the prostate cancer community. A diagnosis of advanced metastatic disease is becoming much less common in the modern age of effective PSA screening, especially in a first world country with easy access to inexpensive blood testing.

Although hundreds of thousands of men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year, many of these diagnoses are either of benign disease which require no treatment, or the diagnosis is made early enough that local treatment to the gland leads to remission and cure in the vast majority of cases, preventing the disease from advancing and posing a lethal threat. Once the disease has metastasized outside of the gland, men then have to undergo a much more rigorous battery of aggressive systemic therapies including hormone altering treatments, chemotherapy, and other boutique specialized treatments. 

The difference between an early diagnosis and an advanced diagnosis is dramatic. Not only in terms of the threat of mortality, but the debilitating lifelong side effects of aggressive treatment that result from fighting the disease. Please encourage your loved ones to screen for prostate cancer. A diagnosis of advanced disease is easily preventable in the age of modern medicine and screening practice. If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, please reach out to the Prostate Cancer Research Institute as we have a wealth of easy to understand information about the disease that is completely free for patients to access.