Former president Joe Biden’s diagnosis of what his office calls an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer is the latest in a long line of health woes and scares that have followed the 82-year-old throughout his political career.
As president, Biden had regular physical examinations at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, that were conducted by Dr. Kevin O’Connor, a former U.S. Army physician who began treating Biden during his time as vice president in the Obama administration.
Though he was the oldest person to serve as commander-in-chief, O’Connor’s reports from those annual exams downplayed his age and invariably pronounced him fit to serve.
One February 2024 memorandum from O’Connor, following Biden’s final annual physical as president, described him as “a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief.”
Yet subsequent events have called into question whether O’Connor — and other top Biden administration aides — were forthcoming about the then-president’s health and fitness.
Four months after his final physical, Biden’s performance at a June 2024 debate with Donald Trump was so dismal that he was forced to exit the race just five weeks later. During the 90-minute televised session, he appeared frail and was unable to form coherent sentences at times, leading to questions over whether he was suffering from any sort of degenerative condition.
Last July, then-White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s, a form of dementia, or another degenerative illness that would explain his rambling, meandering performance. And no evidence has emerged that Biden has been diagnosed with any condition that would have had such an effect on his mental acuity other than the normal aging process.
Yet this is not the first time he has been diagnosed with a form of cancer.
In March 2023, the White House announced that Biden had undergone a procedure to remove a common type of skin cancer from his chest.
A memorandum from O’Connor released to the press at the time said a biopsy “confirmed that the small lesion” removed from the then-president “was basal cell carcinoma”.
“All cancerous tissue was successfully removed. The area around the biopsy site was treated presumptively with electrodessication and curettage at the time of biopsy. No further treatment is required,” O’Connor added.
The former president also battled Covid-19 at two different points during his term, once in 2022 and a second time in July 2024, days before he decided to stand down from his re-election bid after his disastrous debate with Trump.
Before his first bout with Covid, the most serious health problem he had faced since winning the 2020 election had been a broken foot, endured while playing with one of his German Shepherd dogs.
But his health was not always so robust.
Twice in the 1980s, Biden had near-death experiences that required him to undergo brain surgery two times within five months.
He described them in a speech delivered at a Jerusalem hospital during a February 2023 visit to Israel.
“I was making a speech and I had a terrible headache — this was years ago — and I did a very stupid thing: I got on an aircraft and I flew home. It turned out I had two cranial aneurysms, and I got rushed to a hospital in the middle of a snowstorm for a nine-and-a-half-hour operation that saved my life,” he recalled, describing the February 1988 trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, then in Northwest Washington DC.
The plane ride Biden spoke of came after he’d passed out in a hotel following a speech at the University of Rochester.
In his 2007 memoir, Promises to Keep, Biden wrote that he recalled having "lightning flashing inside my head, a powerful electrical surge — and then a rip of pain like I'd never felt before”.
At Walter Reed, he was told he needed surgery, with only a 50-50 chance he’d live through the procedure.
"Maybe I should have been frightened at this point, but I felt calm," he wrote. "In fact, I felt becalmed, like I was floating gently in the wide-open sea. It surprised me, but I had no real fear of dying. I'd long since accepted the fact that life's guarantees don't include a fair shake."
But he did survive, and three months later he underwent a similar procedure to fix another, smaller aneurysm on the opposite side from the first.
According to The Daily Beast, the then-senator made a last-minute request of the surgeon, Dr Neal Kassell, as he was being wheeled in for the procedure.
“He looked me in the eye and said: ‘Doc, do a good job, because someday I’m going to be president,’” Dr Kassell said in November 2020, just days after Biden’s prediction finally became reality with his victory over Trump.
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