Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis reveals a bigger cancer in our media
Who gets to decide the ethics in healthcare and reporting?
The cancer of unethical health reporting has metastasized with the former president’s announcement of his diagnosis. Within hours of Joe Biden’s public disclosure that he has been diagnosed with “a more aggressive form of” prostate cancer, which apparently has metastasized to his bone, a rush of armchair doctors pretending to be media hacks flooded the airwaves and Internet.
Most full-time reporters don’t know more than a bag of rocks about the ins and outs of prostate cancer; I’d say our own David Thornton knows a whole lot more as a survivor of it. You’ve heard of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, where you read on a topic you know and see all the terrible errors, then read the next story (by the same newsroom staff) and believe it completely. This, combined with the conspiracy-laced concoction we drink every day from social media, is fueling the latest terrible obsession with Joe Biden’s prostate.
The timing of Biden’s announcement, on the heels of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book “Original Sin,” which takes on the conspiracy that friendly media acted in concert with the White House to protect the former president from his own declining mentation, could not have been worse.
It is not wrong, however, to ask, “who was running the country?” from 2021 through 2024. We know that the majority of the time, the White House placed a “lid” on coverage early in the day, and that Mr. Biden limited his public exposure. We know he traveled back to Wilmington many weekends. We know that senior officials in his administration would go missing at various times for various reasons. We remember Lloyd Austin’s disappearance, and Pete Buttigeig’s extended paternity leave; Republicans had a field day with those, claiming that critical decisions were left to staffers, and nobody was at the wheel.
The media, and the gaggle of know-nothing TV docs, can speculate that the Bidens hid a long-known cancer diagnosis. But they are not Joe Biden’s doctor, and talking about his health in this way is really an ethical mess. Look at what one doc, who is a bioethicist, told MBNBC’s Morning Joe:
“Oh, he’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist who is the brother of politician Rahm Emanuel and talent agent Ari Emanuel. “It’s a little surprising I look 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.”
It’s pure speculation that some doctor says he would have caught it through a regular examination, or by a PSA blood test. Biden is not their patient. They are appearing on mass market media shows and quoted in articles written by reporters who are not medical experts. They are being asked to fuel the speculation. It’s unethical.
Yet the same newsrooms and reporters write authoritatively that Robert F. Kennedy’s promised overhaul of vaccine approval processes are going to make people sick. It’s well known that RFK Jr.’s views on vaccines and how they are tested are, let’s say charitably, bereft of facts. But we now understand that during the first Trump administration, while Operation Warp Speed sought to speed the mRNA vaccine’s approval, newsrooms reported how that would be dangerous. They were nakedly political in their reporting, noting how a delay in approval and testing processes would put the vaccine delivery beyond the 2020 election, and how Trump sought to take credit for the response by speeding things up.
If you want to read what a doctor who reports on medical issues for a living says, read that media, not the political newsrooms. Dr. Lawrence Altman wrote in STAT, which exclusively focuses on health and medicine.
Based on the public record of Biden’s medical care and standard medical recommendations, as recently as a year ago there was no reason to perform screening tests for the disease, despite his age, 81 at the time. The diagnosis underscores the fact that cancers can sometimes pop up suddenly, even among recipients of the most sophisticated care doctors can offer.
Dr. Altman has reported on presidents’ health for 53 years. STAT regularly requests medical data on sitting presidents, and frequently receives it from the White House medical staff. There are reasons why PSA tests and other tests are not always performed, or trusted, on elderly patients like Mr. Biden. Health needs for 80 year olds are more complex, and arthritis, along with other complications sometimes can mask results. “Should they do every test imaginable because the patient is a national leader whose decisions affect hundreds of millions of people?” Altman asks.
If we apply that standard to President Donald Trump, it falls apart. Trump’s doctors have issued gold-plated health reports that defy belief. A man who regularly eats fast food, treats golf (with a cart) as his main form of cardio, carries a lot of fat, and spends long stretches in front of the television, in his late 70s, is not going to be the picture of Adonis. We don’t know what kind of health concerns the Trump team might be hiding, but you know what, it’s unethical for doctors to spend all day speculating. They’ve already speculated on Trump’s psychological health (whole books have been devoted to the topic) without having him as a patient.
The fact is, it’s likely Mr. Biden found out about his cancer diagnosis, and the spread of it, at some point closer to the announcement than the speculators and media hounds believe. If a sitting president had a cancer rated at a 9 on the Gleason scale (out of 10), don’t you think they’d begin treatment immediately? Don’t you think a president getting chemotherapy or even a biopsy would make the news?
The level of conspiracy necessary to cover up not only the diagnosis, but the treatment, of this kind of cancer in the White House is difficult for me to imagine. It would require coordination of the media, the medical staff, and the political staff that I just don’t see happening without it leaking to the public. The most seasoned staff members know this and would carefully curate the announcement. That’s how it’s being handled now as the Biden family—private citizens—told the world.
From the information Biden’s doctors have provided, it seems that the former president’s prognosis is not grim. “Manageable” is the word used, which, even if there’s no cure, could offer Mr. Biden a reasonable span of life, and in his 80s, that is all he can really hope for.
We need to have higher hopes for our media, though. The ghoulish fascination with conspiracy is bad. It’s bad because it gives fuel to people who are skeptical of things we really do need, like RFK Jr.’s factless takes. If we go running to speculation about the White House covering up a very sick president, and the media participating in that ruse, then how will we combat a government official’s attacks on vaccines that have saved tens of thousands of lives?
The real cancer is believing everything you read online or see on TV. And it’s unfortunately metastasized from one administration to another, down to the bone.
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That is a good perspective.
Mr. Berman makes excellent points. The sad fact that we look for a conspiracy in a situation like this because we realize how much we have been lied to on the past several years. The media and the health care experts have been telling us bull feces for years and we later find out they were either lying or exaggerating (like Captain Spock in THE WRATH OF KHAN).
Biden has dementia? Conspiracy theory. COVID may (not definitely but possibly) came from a lab leak? Conspiracy theory even for just entertaining the thought. Carbs are better than fat and use the food pyramid? It's science don't question it
It's probably that there was no coverup regarding Biden's terrible health news disclosure. But because of his team's prior bad acts we can't be certain.