Biden: ‘Absurd’ to Say I Hid My Stage 4 CancerWorld

Biden was diagnosed in May 2025 with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. Doctors gave the disease a Gleason score of 9, a measure that indicates a fast-growing and aggressive cancer. The diagnosis came months after he had left the White House, and it quickly became the subject of intense public and political debate.

In the memoir, which is due to be published on 17 November, Biden argued that the timing of the diagnosis should not have come as a surprise. He wrote that it is “standard medical protocol” to stop testing men for prostate cancer after the age of 70, a point he presented as an explanation for why the disease was not detected earlier.

Biden completed his treatment in October 2025. He said on Sunday that the illness has not stopped him, but that it sometimes slows him down, and that as a result he will take part in fewer conversations and events to promote the book than he had originally hoped. “I’m hopeful the words on the page speak for themselves,” he said.

His wife, Jill Biden, has said he will live with stage 4 cancer for the rest of his life, a reality the former president has acknowledged as he prepares to discuss the book in public.

The memoir looks back over Biden’s four years in the White House, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the aftermath of the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, his domestic legislation and his foreign policy, as well as the deliberations that led him to end his re-election campaign in 2024. The cancer passages are among its most personal sections, and they are likely to be among the most closely read when the book appears next week.