Should former President Joe Biden’s cancer have been caught sooner? Biased news sources on the left and right are selectively using health guidance and quotes from doctors to advance different conclusions.
Some left-rated sources suggested it was normal for Biden to have forgone prostate cancer screenings, while sources on the right suggested it wasn’t.
According to NPR (Lean Left bias):
The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force does not recommend that men over the age of 70 get routine prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening because the potential harms outweigh the benefits. The task force recommends that men ages 55 to 69 discuss PSA screening with their doctors.
Presidents are not obligated to reveal their medical records, and there is a long history of presidents concealing their medical issues. Disclosures of physicals is left up to the White House.
Quoting doctors, The Washington Post (Lean Left) also suggested that Biden’s situation was unfortunately normal, again pointing to the federal guidance on PSA tests:
“It’s a very common scenario,” said Dr. Matthew Smith of Massachusetts General Brigham Cancer Center. Men can “feel completely well and a diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer could come as quite a surprise.”
Guidelines recommend against prostate cancer screening for men 70 and older so Biden may not have been getting regular PSA blood tests, Smith said. What’s more, while the PSA test can help flag some cancers in some men, it does not do a great job of identifying aggressive prostate cancer, Smith said.
CNN (Lean Left) took a similar angle:
Experts say they understand that the circumstances might prompt fear and suspicion, but they’re also not unheard-of. And although many men are familiar with what prostate cancer screening entails, some might not realize that typical screening is no longer recommended once men reach Biden’s age.
Dr. Oliver Sartor, a prostate cancer researcher at Tulane University, said he’s already fielded calls about Biden’s diagnosis.
“I’ve already been contacted by a friend of mine. He said, ‘How could this possibly have happened? And it must have been a cover-up,’ ” Sartor said, “And I said, ‘No, no, no, not necessarily. There are variety of possibilities.’ ”
On the right, the Washington Examiner (Lean Right) implied the opposite:
Dr. Carole Lieberman, a medical doctor and psychiatrist, told the Washington Examiner that not including a PSA test during a routine physical is unusual.
“Certainly for men over 50, an annual exam should always include a PSA test,” Lieberman said. “They normally do draw blood at an annual exam, and they send it for all kinds of tests. So it’s nothing to include a PSA. And for men over 50 who are more, you know, at risk of prostate cancer, that would be automatic, or it should be automatic.”
Lieberman has frequently criticized Biden and how those around him have handled his health. Others who haven't still share her skepticism.
Writing for National Review (Right), columnist Jim Geraghty (Lean Right) said:
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has declared that the perception that PSA tests are not accurate is “a myth.” Dr. Andrew Vickers of Sloan Kettering explained, “What we want to know is whether PSA can predict who gets the sort of prostate cancer that can cause symptoms and threaten a patient’s life. It turns out that PSA is very good at doing that. . . . We know there are benefits, and that’s not controversial. . . . We have evidence that prostate cancer screening reduces the risk of dying from prostate cancer.”
It is surprising, to say the least, to learn that within 15 months, Biden went from a sparkling clean bill of health — “fit for duty” — to a stage 4 metastasized cancer diagnosis… One would like to think that the president’s annual physical would be thorough, even exhaustive — particularly for an octogenarian president who had survived two aneurysms, brain surgery, and the occasional trip over a sandbag or fall off a bicycle.
Newsmax (Right) highlighted another doctor who questioned how Biden didn’t know about the cancer sooner:
"Oh, he's had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading," Oncologist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who was a medical expert on former President Joe Biden's COVID Advisory Board, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday, pointing to industry standard prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing.
"I looked back at the records and there's no evidence that when he got his health status and the medical records were released, that he had a prostate specific antigen.
"Now, it is true that a lot of people recommend not doing a prostate-specific antigen after 70, but President Biden's been in public life a very long time. He was vice president and had a lot of exams under 70. So it's a little surprising that they didn't do it. And maybe President Biden decided he didn't want the test. Many men do decide they don't want the PSA, but this is also aggressive."
The Wall Street Journal (Center) noted the government guidance on PSA screenings, but with a caveat about presidential transparency:
Donald Trump—the second oldest president at age 78—does get screened. He released the results of his prostate-cancer screening last month, showing a normal score. Barack Obama released his PSA score when he was president, as did George W. Bush.
You could read 10 more articles and still come away without a consensus on whether men of Biden’s age should undergo routine prostate screenings. Mostly, that’s because doctors and health institutions seem to vary considerably in how they answer the question. But biased media then cherry-pick examples to fit their preferred narrative.
Henry A. Brechter is the Editor-in-chief of AllSides. He has a Center bias.
Reviewed by:
Research & Growth Strategist Olivia Geno (Lean Right bias)
News Editor & Bias Analyst Emily Allen (Left bias)
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