Former President Joe Biden has denied that he concealed his cancer diagnosis from the American public, addressing longstanding rumors that he was hiding his true physical and mental condition during his presidency.
He rejected the allegations in his forthcoming memoir, Promise Me, America, which will be published on November 17.
Photo by Adam Schultz / Biden for President
In excerpts from the book obtained by MS NOW and published on Tuesday, the former president expressed his frustration with commentators and political opponents who have suggested he must have been aware of his illness before announcing it in May 2025, after he had left office.
The former president was diagnosed with aggressive stage 4 prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.
Biden insists he was unaware of the disease while serving as president.
The excerpts were published shortly after the former president also announced that his cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatment would prevent him from promoting his new book as extensively as he had hoped.
The 83-year-old former president said in a social media statement that his doctors are encouraged by his response to treatment. Still, he also admitted that the disease continues to affect his daily life.
What Biden Claims
According to MS NOW, President Biden discussed the political controversy that came in the wake of his cancer diagnosis.
In the book, he rejects the suggestion that he deliberately withheld information about his health while serving as president. The former president announced his diagnosis on May 18, 2025, two days after doctors discovered the disease.
The announcement quickly prompted public scrutiny and media reports that the president may not have been forthcoming about his condition.
In his memoir, Biden described the allegations as “cynical,” and argued that nobody facing advanced cancer would willingly allow it to progress without receiving treatment.
“For anyone to think I would try to ignore or hide a cancer ravaging my body is absurd,” he writes in the book. “Here are the simple facts. Standard medical protocol is to stop testing men for prostate cancer after the age of seventy.”
The reason, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, is that the potential benefits of screening for prostate cancer don’t outweigh the expected harms for men over the age of 70.
Biden also said in the book that he wishes he had been tested sooner.
“And as I sit here today, do I wish I had been tested sooner? Yes, I do. Do I wish the cancer had been caught before it spread to my bones? Yes, I do,” he continued. “But I was treated no differently from any other eighty-two-year-old man in America. Maybe I should have been. But I wasn’t.”
Trump’s Accusation
President Donald Trump was among those who accused the former president of hiding the extent of his ill health. Trump initially offered his sympathy to Biden and his family on May 18, but later, his position changed somewhat.
Donald Trump Back in 2025 White House Photo
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump questioned why the public hadn’t been informed about the disease sooner and suggested the timeline didn’t make sense.
The president suggested that the former president’s doctors may have been withholding information.
“I think it’s very sad, actually,” Trump told reporters. “I’m surprised that it wasn’t, you know, the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to stage nine, that’s a long time.”
He added that “somebody is not telling the facts.”
Other Republicans also expressed doubt that former President Biden had been forthcoming about his health, including Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who publicly suggested that Biden’s illness could have been known during his time as president.
Why Wasn’t It Detected?
In May 2025, The Washington Post reported that Biden’s office had confirmed that his last known prostate cancer screening took place in 2014 when he was 71 years old and serving as vice president.
That timeline means President Biden went more than a decade without undergoing a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test before his diagnosis.
And despite serving four years as president and undergoing physical examinations every year, the president was not routinely screened for the disease because of his age.
Prostate cancer can develop for years without producing any noticeable symptoms, and some aggressive forms of cancer can spread quickly, meaning that an advanced diagnosis does not always indicate that the patient was aware of the disease.
Biden’s cancer was eventually discovered after he experienced urinary symptoms, which prompted doctors to send him for testing.
Doctors then identified a nodule on his prostate.
Since then, the former president has undergone radiation and hormone therapy, and in his memoir, he reveals that he completed radiation treatment in October.
He reportedly continues to receive hormone therapy to control the disease — but even still, the cancer remains a serious concern.
In August, Hunter Biden, the son of the former president, confirmed that his father’s cancer had spread further and was causing significant pain.
About the Author: Jack Buckby
Jack Buckby is a British researcher and analyst specializing in defense and national security, based in New York. His work focuses on military capability, procurement, and strategic competition, and he produces and edits analysis for policy and defense audiences. He brings extensive editorial experience, with a career output spanning over 1,000 articles at 19FortyFive and National Security Journal, and has previously authored books and papers on extremism and deradicalization.
