Scott Adams, the “Dilbert” cartoonist turned right-wing social media commentator, has Stage 4 prostate cancer — the same aggressive variety that President Biden’s office just announced he has.
Adams revealed his diagnosis Monday morning while discussing Sunday’s Biden news on “Real Coffee With Scott Adams,” his daily podcast.
“Big story of the day. You may have heard that Joe Biden has prostate cancer, but it’s not the good kind. It’s the bad kind,” Adams said. “There’s something you need to know about prostate cancer. If it’s localized and it hasn’t left your prostate, it’s 100% curable. But if it leaves your prostate and spreads to other parts of your body, in this case, Joe Biden has it in his bones, it is 100% not curable.”
Turns out Adams has firsthand knowledge of what Biden can expect as his disease progresses.
“Today is the day I’ve decided that I’m going to take the opportunity … to make an announcement of my own,” he said about seven minutes into Monday’s show. “Some of you have already guessed, so this won’t surprise you at all, but I have the same cancer Joe Biden has. I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones, but I’ve had it longer than he’s had it. Well, longer than he’s admitted having it.
“So my life expectancy is maybe this summer. I expect to be checking out from this domain sometime this summer.”
Adams had already offered his “respect and compassion and sympathy” to Biden and his family because, he said, “They’re going to be going through an especially tough time. It’s a terrible disease. It’s going to get very painful.” He said he chose Monday to reveal his own diagnosis because he was hoping the attention on Biden having the same cancer would lure away some of the online attention.
He kept his diagnosis a secret at first, he said, because he wanted to keep life as normal as he could for as long as he could, before he turned into “just the dying cancer guy.”
No stranger to online controversy, Adams said he expected to receive abuse in the digital arena because, as he saw with Biden’s announcement, “People are really cruel. They’re really bad.”
“People are going to say it’s because I got the COVID shot. There’s no indication that that makes a difference. People are going to say it’s something I brought on myself. They’re going to say it’s because I lived a bad life. Pfft. I don’t know,” Adams explained. “But people are going to be really, really terrible.”
He expected his “enemies, in other words, people who are Democrats, mostly” would come after him “pretty hard,” but said he was ready to deal with that.
But Adams said he is dealing with terrible pain. He’s been using a walker for months now and appears to be planning to take advantage of a California law that allows physician-assisted suicide for terminal patients.
“I was actually an activist when California was considering this,” he explained. “In California, once you get to the point where you’re definitely going to die, you’re terminal, there is a very civilized process where you can get some juice that you drink that makes you fall asleep and then you pass away. … So you do that when the disease becomes intolerable. Now, the disease is already intolerable. I can tell you that I don’t have good days.”
After getting through his explanation and detailing the reasons he kept his diagnosis from his listeners, Adams launched into the news of the day, talking about topics including hiring practices at Harvard and in Chicago and the flaws in the “big, beautiful” budget bill Republicans are pushing through Congress.
He wasn’t cool with any of it — which sounded fairly close to normal Scott Adams.
On Sunday, the office of former President Biden issued a statement saying, “Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.”
It added, “While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive, which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”
Outcomes have improved in recent decades and patients can expect to live with metastatic prostate cancer for four or five years, Dr. Matthew Smith of Massachusetts General Brigham Cancer Center told the Associated Press on Sunday. “It’s very treatable, but not curable,” he said.