Scott Adams, the influential author, cartoonist, and pundit, revealed Monday that he is suffering from metastasized prostate cancer — the same diagnosis President Joe Biden reported the day before.
“I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has,” Adams said. “I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones.”
“My life expectancy is maybe this summer,” he said.
He said that he was considering ending his own life, as California law allows, using self-administered drugs.
“I’m in pain,” he said, “I’m always in pain.” He said he had relied on a walker for several months.
He said he had come to terms with his condition, and accepted that experimental treatments would not work for him.
“It’s kind of civilized, that you know how long you have, so you can put your affairs together, said your goodbyes, do all the things you have to do.”
“This one is really painful, but it’s kind of good that it gives you time, while your brain is still working, to wrap things up,” he said.
Adams rose to fame as the artist and writer who created Dilbert, one of the most popular cartoons in the world. Dilbert mocks office culture and corporate America, as well as large organizations generally.
In 2014, Adams published How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, which remains one of the most widely-read contemporary books of business advice. The following year, he began commenting on politics as he became fascinated by Donald Trump’s journey in the 2016 campaign.
Adams concluded that Trump had unique persuasive abilities that could also be harnessed by ordinary people, and distilled those insights into a book about Trump’s 2016 victory, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter. His insights about political debate also led him to publish Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America. His daily live stream, Coffee with Scott Adams, and his insights on his Locals platform, drew audiences of millions, and reached powerful decision-makers.
In 2022, many of Adams’s publishers dropped Dilbert and his books after he reflected on polls that suggested a significant portion of black Americans resented white Americans, and said that white Americans should “get away” from black Americans if they became a “racist hate group.” The context — lost in the controversy — was Adams’ repeated effort to help the Black Lives Matter movement improve its message and persuasion.
Adams found success as an independent publisher, launching Dilbert Reborn and self-publishing another successful book of life lessons: Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success.
Adams has also, informally, advised prominent politicians, journalists, and social media influencers.
News of his illness was shared only among a close group of associates until he went public with his diagnosis on Monday.
He said he had delayed going public because he didn’t want to be treated as “the dying cancer guy.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
