President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with “aggressive” metastatic prostate cancer. My heart goes out to him and his family.
According to the American Cancer Society the incidence of prostate cancer per 100,000 population rises with age:
| Age | Incidence |
| 40-49 | 1.2 |
| 50-59 | 10.5 |
| 60-69 | 39.2 |
| 70-79 | 58.6 |
| 80+ | 68.7 |
While that’s still far from a certainty, it’s yet another reason that we should avoid electing men over 70 to the presidency.
One of many reasons though I think cognitive decline is most important. Most prostate cancers are slow and dont really affect life expectancy much but about 1/4 are aggressive.
Steve
A major difference is that metastatic prostate cancer is a lot less subjective and harder to explain away than cognitive deficit.
On Morning Joe Zeke Emanuel (Rahm’s brother), an oncologist, speculated that they’ve known about this cancer for some time—possibly as long as ten years. He expressed disbelief that they haven’t known about it until recently.
Its hard to “go there” when someone is truly sick, but with all the recent revelations about his cognitive coverup I guess its fair game.
Many urologists seem disturbed by this notion it was not known.
Steve would of course know better, but my father went through this. Diagnosed at 57, died at 67. (In a car crash, but I learned he was riddled with cancer by then.) And oncologist told him at age 58 that he would look back in 10 years and wonder what all the fuss was about. However…………
The radiation was a mess. Then the hormones and so on. It was just an endless slog. Medically, I think its still to see how he responds to treatment.
Politically, Democrats better prepare for the next wave of coverup talk, whether true or not. They bought that gift with Biden’s cognitive state coverup.
Commentator/cartoonist Scott Adams has just now announced he has the same metastatic prostate cancer (also to the bones). He says he does not expect to make it through the summer.
Personally, I will simply wish grace to both men. I lost a grandparent the same way long ago.
Politically, the pairing is a cosmic example of partisan cognitive dissonance in action.
May we all use it to free ourselves, at least for a moment, from the endless cycle.
We probably wont ever know but unless you practice medicine I dont think you would believe how many people “dont want to know”*. We have had people show up in the ED with gaping open tumors oozing stuff out of them since they didnt want to know what it was, afraid someone would tell them it’s cancer. He should have been offered a PSA but he may have refused.
That gets into the ethics of what should be required of a president. From my POV they should be required to have such a test and we should know the results. No one forced them to run for POTUS. Major corporations require their execs to get comprehensive screening and we should do the same. Heck, if I were in charge it would be required of everyone running for the office. We need to stop treating these guys like royalty.
*The corollary here is how many people do know they have a given medical issue and then just ignore it, stop treatments early or dont take their meds.
Steve
I think you have that exactly correct, steve.
Perhaps in insignificant modification – if Biden had bursitis. Meh. Most orthopedic issues. Meh. Cancer is not an insignificant issue. It calls into question survivability, I don’t care the probabilities.
Just as a reminder. The main alternative to the eventual Democratic nominee is 2016 and 2020 was even older (Sanders); and Democrats had a Potemkin primary in 2024.