Ezekiel Emanuel said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that there are a lot of life-extending treatments available to treat former President Joe Biden’s prostate cancer.
Emanuel said, “When you have a lesion that’s in the bone, and therefore it’s metastatic and incurable, the prostate cancer will not go away. He will have it, that doesn’t mean he’s going to die from it because there are a lot of treatments. There’s androgen blockade that’s basically preventing the testosterone from circulating. There’s also androgen receptor signaling inhibitors, a second line of treatment that prevents, when the androgen does bind to the cell from it, doing its action and turning on genes. So there’s a lot there’s and then there’s chemotherapy beyond that. There’s also treatment for that metastatic lesion near the spine if it’s a threat. So he has a lot of treatments and he could live a long time.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough asked, “You would say that very few people have actually had it diagnosed at this late stage. That’s rare. Doesn’t it take some time for prostate cancer to develop to a point where it would spread to the bone?”
Emanuel said, “Oh, he’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading. That’s right. It’s a little surprising. 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.”
Scarborough asked, “If you have prostate cancer that has spread to the bone, then he’s most certainly you are saying had it when he was President of the United States.”
Emanuel said, “Oh yeah he did not develop it in the last 100 to 200 days. He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021. yes, that I don’t think there’s any disagreement about that.”
Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN
