Several doctors seem to be part of the developing consensus that former President Joe Biden’s advanced prostate cancer likely began several years ago — in the midst of his presidency — raising further concerns about an administration that fought against transparency in the decision-making and health concerns of its chief executive. 

Joe Biden’s diagnosis with “aggressive” metastatic prostate cancer, which was announced by his personal office on Sunday, comes just about four months after the former president left office in January. It also comes as the former president and his staff are battling scrutiny again over the administration’s lack of transparency about apparent memory issues and fitness for office. 

The renewed scrutiny on Biden’s age and memory lapses was spurred by the recent release of the interview tapes conducted by Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Hur into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left the vice presidency. Those tapes reveal a sitting president who struggled to remember key details and dates, including the year he left office as vice president, the death of his son, and occasionally slurring his words and muttering, Just the News reported.

But, several doctors are saying the president’s condition almost certainly emerged years earlier—during Biden’s presidency. 

Yale medical professor: "This is odd"

“It is inconceivable that this was not being followed before he left the Presidency,” Dr. Howard Forman, a physician and professor at Yale School of Medicine, posted to X. He explained that such an advanced-stage cancer would have appeared numerous times on tests often taken by older Americans, the PSA blood test. “This is odd,” he added. 

Prostate cancer is often detected via a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test and a rectal exam. It is ranked on a scale of severity from 6-10, with 10 being the most severe. Biden’s reported score of 9 suggests a more aggressive form of the cancer that doctors say takes some time to develop. 

“For even with the most aggressive form, it is a 5-7 year journey without treatment before it becomes metastatic,” Dr. Steven Quay posted to X. “Meaning, it would be malpractice for this patient to show up and be first diagnosed with metastatic disease in May 2025.” Quay added that “It is highly likely he was carrying a diagnosis of prostate cancer throughout his White House tenure and the American people were uninformed.”

Dr. Zeke Emanuel, brother of Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and who formerly served on Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory council, confirmed that it was nearly impossible for the cancer to have developed in the time since the former president left office. 

“He did not develop it in the last 100, 200 days. He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021. Yes, I don't think there's any disagreement about that,” Emanuel told MSNBC. 

Majority of citizens polled say coordinated cover-up was at work 

The suggestion that the Biden family and the attendant White House administration may have concealed a cancer diagnosis from the public comes as the Bidens and former administration officials are battling fresh accusations that they were concealing the former president’s mental decline during his four-year term. 

Some Democrats have suggested that the new cancer news should encourage the media to end investigations into President Biden’s health decline during his presidency. Longtime Democratic strategist and Obama advisor David Axelrod said discussions of the former president’s mental decline “should be more muted and set aside for now as he’s struggling through this.”

Nonetheless, many Americans are still asking for accountability: Polling suggests a majority of Americans believe Biden's health decline was covered up by his administration. According to polling by the Napolitan News Service, before the latest developments were released, in as early as January 2025, 60% of Americans believed “there was a coordinated effort to cover up the president's mental and physical decline.” Additionally, the poll found just 31% of voters believed Biden was “fully in charge” during his last year. The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters online and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1

If Biden’s decline was concealed by his staff, it could raise further questions about the legitimacy of the president’s action during his waning days in office. Last month, the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, the investigative arm of the conservative think-tank, alleged President Biden made liberal use of an “autopen” to sign official documents while he was president, suggesting a staff member could have signed documents on Biden’s behalf without the president's knowledge or approval.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer announced last week that his committee would probe the allegations, especially considering the autopen was allegedly used to sign several controversial pardons at the end of his term. The investigation, Comer said, will focus on whether the former president was mentally fit to authorize the use of the pen, or if White House staffers authorized its use for the pardons instead.

More and more events motivate the renewed scrutiny

The recent release of the Hur tapes has only spurred new scrutiny into the Biden administration’s handling of the president’s health and mental acuity—concerns which were previously heightened during the former president’s poor first debate performance against now-President Trump. That incident ultimately led to Biden dropping out of the presidential race altogether.

The tapes, which were released in full on Saturday, show Biden struggling to remember key details and dates as he answered questions in a Justice Department probe into his handling of classified documents. 

The tape shows long pauses in the former president's speech that were not revealed in the transcript previously released by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee ahead of Special Counsel Hur’s appearance before the panel last year.  

Special Counsel Hur’s report, which was delivered to Attorney General Merrick Garland in February 2024, assessed the president’s mental acuity. Hur and his team ultimately recommended against bringing charges despite finding that Biden “willfully” kept and shared classified memos. “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote.

When reality became too real to deny

In March 2024, dismissing acuity concerns, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough dutifully said on-air that "Biden is far beyond cogent. He is better than he has ever been intellectually, analytically. He is the best Biden ever." 

Now Hollywood and the liberal-leaning media who once dismissed talk of Biden's health have now begun to jump on the issue, especially since a new book to be released on Tuesday by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN anchor Jake Tapper, is set to detail a concerted scheme by family members and their aides to deceive the public about President Biden’s worsening health issues.

Although new media have reported on the issue for years, the book, titled "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again" represents the tip of the liberal iceberg now recognizing Biden's mental decline while he was in office. The book has already provided new anecdotes about how those around the former president became aware of efforts to suppress coverage of the concerns. 

One excerpt, published ahead of the book’s release, alleges then-President Biden didn't recognize actor George Clooney at a fundraiser in June, ahead of the presidential debate. The debate revealed to the nation on live television a picture of a confused and rambling Executive-in-Chief.

Clooney, a diehard supporter and longtime acquaintance of Biden and also a major Democratic fundraiser, was surprised at Biden's "diminished" state during the event, according to the excerpt. "Biden hobbled out from around the corner. Clooney knew the president had just arrived from the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Apulia, Italy, that morning and might be tired, but hooooooooooly s*it, he wasn’t expecting this," the book says.

Clooney would go on to pen an Op-Ed for The New York Times, writing that "It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."