Former President Joe Biden's last Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test was done in 2014, while he was serving as vice president in the Obama administration, his office announced Tuesday.
The PSA blood test is one of the most common ways to screen for prostate cancer.
"Prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer," a spokesperson for the former president's office said, addressing rumors that the 82-year-old had been quietly diagnosed while leading the executive branch.
The announcement on Sunday that Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to the bone reportedly shocked both longtime members of the Democrat's inner circle and doctors alike.
According to the New York Post, Dr. Kevin O'Connor, a family friend of the Bidens who served as his White House physician, did not mention a PSA test in his report on the former president's February 2024 physical exam.
"I think the likely scenario, knowing Kevin O'Connor pretty well, is that they had a discussion on what a PSA test is, and they decided not to do one because it would likely be elevated and cause a story, since a lot of older men have high PSAs that are false positives," a long-serving aide to Biden told the Post on Monday.
"A blood test has a paper trail," the aide said. "They probably just didn't do the test. I think it would leak if he had a PSA test they tried to bury."
"What's ironic is that if they didn't give the president a PSA test because of the potential for optics of a possible false positive, that decision is ultimately going to lead to his death because they could have caught it earlier," the person added.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist who helped draft the Affordable Care Act, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday that Biden's prostate cancer has been growing and spreading "for many years, maybe even a decade."
"He did not develop it in the last 100 to 200 days," Emanuel said. "He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021."
But Dr. Daniel Petrylak, a professor of medicine and medical urology at Yale School of Medicine, told Newsmax it's difficult to determine when Biden's cancer developed.
"Generally, for a patient in his 80s, it's controversial as to how frequently they should receive a PSA and how often they should be screened," Petrylak said Monday on "Newsline."
"Now, there's some patients that do develop prostate cancer with low PSA values and it only can be detected on rectal exams," he said. "So, I can't really comment on this case and really determine exactly when the president had developed prostate cancer without really a clear review of his medical records."
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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