Biden Says Radiation Worked After His Cancer Spread to Bone

Former President Joe Biden said on Sept. 8 that radiation for advanced prostate cancer “worked as intended,” and that he is still writing his memoir.

He used Prostate Cancer Awareness Month to tell men to talk to a doctor. Doctors found his cancer in May 2025, after it had already reached his bones.

Radiation Worked. The Stage Stayed Put.

The 83-year-old posted that more than 330,000 American men this year will hear a prostate cancer diagnosis, the same words his family heard last spring. “By the time we found it, it had already spread to my bones,” he wrote. “When prostate cancer is caught early, the five-year survival is close to 100%. So have the conversation with your doctor. Don’t put it off.”

Every September we mark Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. This year it’s more personal for me.

More than 330,000 American men this year will hear the words we did last spring when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. By the time we found it, it had already spread to my bones.…

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 8, 2026

His office first described the disease on May 18, 2025, two days after the diagnosis. Doctors had seen him for urinary symptoms, found a nodule on the prostate, and graded the tumor a Gleason score of 9, Grade Group 5, with metastasis to bone. That is Stage 4. The statement also said the cancer appeared to be hormone-sensitive, “which allows for effective management.”

Hormone-sensitive means drugs that cut testosterone can still slow the tumor. It does not mean the cancer can be cut out of bone. Physicians who discussed the case in May 2025 said Stage 4 disease is treated, not cured. Dr. Peter Nelson, vice president of precision oncology at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, called spread to bone “a very serious condition.”

Biden finished several weeks of radiation on Oct. 20, 2025, at Penn Medicine Radiation Oncology in Philadelphia, aide Kelly Scully said. His office had disclosed the course on Oct. 11. His daughter Ashley Biden posted him ringing the clinic bell and wrote, “Rung the Bell! Thank you to the incredible doctors, nurses, and staff at Penn Medicine. We are so grateful!” He also had surgery that September for basal cell skin cancer.

In the Sept. 8 post he thanked the people “who helped to control my cancer,” not the people who ended it. That wording matches the diagnosis he still has.

A Month After His Son Described Bone Pain

The September line lands on a family record that is less tidy than a bell-ringing video. On Aug. 8, Hunter Biden said his father’s cancer had moved again and was taking a daily toll.

The cancer has spread, metastasized into his bones and further. It’s very painful and it’s very debilitating, in many respects.

Hunter Biden, Aug. 8, 2026

He added that he wished his father “would complain more, because it’s not good,” and that it was “really sad to watch.” He also said the former president was “still out there” and would “continue to fight.”

Jill Biden, a former first lady and his wife, has been the plainer medical witness. She said he will “forever live with cancer,” that the work of it is “constant” and “daily,” and that Stage 4 disease at 83, plus the drugs, has “made life a little more difficult.” In June she said he keeps a schedule but has slowed down. The gap between that account and a post about radiation that “worked as intended” is the part of this update that is easy to miss if you only read the first sentence.

What a PSA of Zero Means in Stage 4 Disease

Jill Biden said in late August that new scans were “very optimistic” and that his PSA is zero. She added her own reading of the number: that it means “the cancer’s not in the prostate anymore.” The medications, she said, are “kinda daunting.”

He just had scans, and they were very optimistic.

Jill Biden, The Jamie Kern Lima Show

PSA at zero is a good lab result on hormone therapy. It is not a scan of bone. PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, is a protein that prostate tissue, including cancer, releases into blood. After drugs that shut down testosterone, the blood test can fall so low that labs report it as undetectable. Large treatment trials have treated a drop to 0.2 or lower as a sign that points toward longer control. It still measures a protein in blood, not a lesion in a rib or a spine.

WHAT A ZERO PSA IS

• The test: PSA is a blood protein used both to screen healthy men and to track known prostate cancer.
• The good reading: An undetectable result after hormone therapy means the drugs are suppressing the cancer’s output, which doctors treat as a favorable response.
• The limit: It does not prove that bone metastases have vanished, and it does not turn Stage 4 disease into a cure.

Biden’s own post stayed inside that lane. He said radiation “worked as intended” and that doctors helped “control” the cancer. He did not say the bone disease is gone. The recovery reading is coming from the way “PSA is zero” travels once it leaves a clinic note.

333,830 New Cases and the Survival Split

The American Cancer Society’s 2026 estimates are 333,830 new prostate cancer cases and 36,320 deaths. About 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed in a lifetime. About 1 in 44 will die of it. More than 3.5 million American men who have had the diagnosis are alive. Six in 10 cases are found at 65 or older, and the average age at diagnosis is about 67.

Biden’s “close to 100%” line is the localized number. For men whose cancer is still inside the prostate, or only in nearby tissue, the Society’s five-year survival rate of 38% is not the figure that applies. That 38% is distant disease, cancer already in bone, lung, or liver, based on men diagnosed from 2015 to 2021. Localized and regional disease both sit above 99%. All stages combined sit at 98%. His case was distant on day one.

SURVIVAL BY HOW FAR THE CANCER HAS SPREAD

The National Cancer Institute’s SEER program puts 9% of cases found after distant spread. That is the bucket Biden entered in May 2025. Incidence has been rising 3% a year from 2014 through 2022, after a long drop that followed weaker screening. The Society says the death rate fell by about half from 1993 to 2022, then the decline slowed, “likely reflecting the rise in cancers being found at an advanced stage.” His post is a personal version of that national shift.

Black Men Get a Different Screening Clock

The sharpest public-health passage in the post is not the memoir. It is the line aimed at Black men, who Biden said are “nearly 70% more likely to get this disease and 2 to 4 times more likely to die from it,” which he called “an outrage in the richest country in the world.” The Society’s matching figures are nearly 70% higher incidence and twice the death rate. His upper bound on death risk is the top of a range some clinicians still use. The measured national gap is twofold.

He told average-risk men to start the doctor conversation around 50, and said “the guidelines now say screening every 2 to 4 years.” That interval is the American Urological Association and Society of Urologic Oncology rule, which offers regular screening every 2 to 4 years to people aged 50 to 69. The American Cancer Society still times the first talk at 50 for average risk, 45 for Black men and for men whose father or brother had the disease young, and 40 when more than one close relative was diagnosed early. If a man screens and his PSA is under 2.5 ng/mL, the Society says the next test can wait 2 years; at 2.5 or higher, it says yearly.

WHEN THE GUIDELINES SAY TO START

• Average risk: The Society wants a shared decision at 50, for men expected to live at least 10 more years; the AUA allows a first PSA between 45 and 50.
• Black men and a father or brother with the disease: Start the talk at 45, the Society says, and the AUA says offer screening from 40 to 45 for Black ancestry, inherited mutations, or a strong family history.
• More than one close relative, diagnosed young: The Society moves that first conversation to 40.
• How often after that: The AUA’s strong recommendation is every 2 to 4 years from 50 to 69; the Society shortens the gap when the PSA is already 2.5 or higher.

Biden told men with a father or brother who had prostate cancer to start at 45, “and even earlier if more than one of them did.” That tracks the Society’s ladder. The man delivering it did not get the early version of that conversation in time for it to change his own stage.

His Last Reported PSA Test Was in 2014

The screening sermon has a hole with a date on it. Spokesman Chris Meagher said in May 2025, “President Biden’s last known PSA was in 2014.” He also said the former president had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer before Friday, May 16, 2025. That is an 11-year gap, through a vice presidency, a presidential term, and the months after he left office in January 2025.

Jill Biden has said White House care was “amazing” and that “somehow that was missed,” pointing to guidance that men over 70 often drop routine PSA testing because the cancer can grow slowly. Dr. Isaac Kim, chief of urology at Yale School of Medicine, said the other side of that choice: “If President Biden was getting that marker checked on a regular basis, it should have been picked up years ago.” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician and University of Pennsylvania vice provost, was blunter. “He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021.” He said the tumor had been “growing there and spreading” for “many years, maybe even a decade,” and “did not develop it in the last 100 to 200 days.”

Other prostate specialists pushed back on the idea of a hidden chart. Dr. Scott Eggener of the University of Chicago said continuing screening into the 70s can be reasonable if a man is healthy and likely to live 10 years, and also said an aggressive cancer can still show up after clean checkups. Dr. Phillip Koo, chief medical officer at the Prostate Cancer Foundation, said the tumor might have been growing for years, or it might have had a shorter course. Dr. Todd Morgan, co-director of the Weiser Center for Prostate Cancer at Michigan Medicine, called it “unsettling” that someone with that level of care could “suddenly be diagnosed with aggressive, metastatic prostate cancer.”

FROM THE LAST PSA TO THE SEPTEMBER POST

1. 2014: Last known PSA test, per spokesman Chris Meagher, when Biden was in his early 70s.
2. May 16, 2025: Doctors diagnose Gleason 9 prostate cancer with bone metastasis after urinary symptoms and a prostate nodule.
3. May 18, 2025: His office announces the finding and says the cancer appears hormone-sensitive.
4. Oct. 20, 2025: He finishes several weeks of radiation at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia and rings the clinic bell.
5. Aug. 8, 2026: Hunter Biden says the cancer has spread in bone “and further” and is very painful.
6. Late August 2026: Jill Biden says new scans look optimistic and that his PSA is zero.
7. Sept. 8, 2026: Biden posts that radiation “worked as intended” and tells men not to put off screening.

The loudest objection around the post is not the memoir. It is this timeline. A former president asking men to start at 50 is also a man whose last reported screening test sits 11 years before a bone-metastatic diagnosis, in a country that already knows late-stage incidence is climbing.

The Memoir He Says He Is Still Writing

Biden closed by saying he is “finishing my memoir” and asking people to “ask the hard questions.” He has kept some public appearances, including the June 18, 2026, opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Hunter said that as long as his father is alive, “he is going to continue to fight.” Jill has said the drugs and the disease have already changed the pace of that fight.

The hard question his post is built to raise is the one he put to other men: talk to a doctor before urinary symptoms send you in, and before a nodule is already sitting on a scan with bone lesions behind it. The hard question his chart raises is narrower. A PSA of zero, a finished course of radiation, and a book still in progress can all be true in the same month as Stage 4 disease that his son called debilitating 31 days earlier.

He asked men to do the screening conversation for themselves and for the people who love them. He is 16 months, give or take a week, past a diagnosis that arrived in bone. The book is unfinished. So is the cancer.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of public statements about Joe Biden’s prostate cancer and of published screening and survival figures. It is informational only and is not medical advice, a diagnosis, a prognosis, or a treatment recommendation for Biden or for any reader. Men considering a PSA test, or anyone making decisions about cancer care, should talk with a qualified physician, urologist, or oncologist who knows their history, including age, family risk, and other health conditions. Case counts, survival rates, and the former president’s lab results and symptoms reflect the American Cancer Society, SEER, the AUA guideline, and the people quoted, and those figures and his condition can change.