Joe Biden’s Cancer Diagnosis Adds to a Life of Hard Battles

• May 19, 2025

Joe Biden’s long career in politics has been marked by personal tragedies and political setbacks, but also by resilience. Now, at 82, he faces another serious challenge—an aggressive and advanced form of prostate cancer.

Just four months after leaving office as a one-term president, Biden’s diagnosis has added to the growing concerns over his health and age that followed him throughout his presidency. The cancer was discovered despite the extensive medical care available to him, raising new questions about how it had gone undetected for so long.

Biden’s connection to cancer is deeply personal. In 2015, his eldest son Beau died from brain cancer at the age of 46. That loss left a lasting impact on the former president, and in 2016, then-President Barack Obama appointed him to lead the government’s “Cancer Moonshot” initiative—an effort Biden later expanded during his own time in the White House.

The diagnosis comes amid renewed attention on Biden’s health, especially after his difficult debate performance against Donald Trump in June, which fueled calls from within the Democratic Party for him to step down from the 2024 presidential race. Biden eventually ended his campaign after mounting pressure, despite earlier insisting that he was capable of serving another term.

His illness now shifts the tone of public discussion, softening some of the criticism sparked by recent books that describe how aides tried to hide the toll of aging on his performance as president. These accounts suggest that those close to Biden worked behind the scenes to manage signs of physical and mental decline during his presidency.

There’s no evidence that the prostate cancer was visible during his time in office. Still, the diagnosis brings new concerns about what might have happened if he had remained in office or been re-elected.

Even Donald Trump, who has often been a harsh critic, offered a rare gesture of goodwill by sending “warmest and best wishes” to the Biden family following the news.

Since leaving office in January, Biden has kept a low profile, appearing in only a few media interviews. But his health battle may offer him a chance to re-engage the public and shape his legacy once more—not just as a former president, but as a man known for persistence in the face of adversity