OK, I know I'm gonna sound like those historians I loathe for their pretentiousness (HCR, Kruse), but "laboratory technologist here" - and YES, I have in fact run many PSA tests through the years. Anyone saying that "well, he had regular tests and it HAD to have shown positive" is - and there are so many of them right now on social media - to be charitable, they don't quite know what they're saying.
YES - PSA generally speaking is a screening tool for Prostate Cancer (for those who may not know, PSA stands for Prostate Specific Antigen), but it (as Bamaro noted above) is not even close to always 100%. I mentioned this example previously: when you go in thinking you may have Strep throat, the lab runs a Rapid Strep on you. There is about a 1/3 chance if it's negative that it is WRONG, but there's never a positive that is wrong. If the screen is negative, most places culture the second swab and you will know within 48 hours. Because strep throat itself is harmless - it's the sequelae (rheumatic fever or glomerulonephritis that is the fear) - the doctor can feel justified giving you basic antibiotics for strep that will be working before he knows FOR SURE.
The PSA is not THAT "unreliable" (to use a strong term), but even though it is specific antigen to the prostate that does not AUTOMATICALLY "if it's low, you're good." It is a screen along with a digital rectal exam that serves as the "second screen" (this is usually when they also take the occult blood test to see if you have a GI bleed, which is a crude screen for colon cancer).
1) I do not for one second believe that Joe Biden, who had had skin cancer previously, NEVER had a PSA test in all these years. It's POSSIBLE - but not probable - that he didn't have one between 2017 and 2021, when he was neither VP nor President, but I don't believe that.
2) I CAN, however, believe it is POSSIBLE that his PSA was low enough they didn't pursue much more. As a reminder,
Desert Storm Commander Norman Schwarzkopf had a PSA of 1.8 and DID, in fact, have prostate cancer when he was only 59 years old. His symptom was knee tendinitis.
3) One possible side effect of chemotherapy is what is called "chemo-brain" and another is strokes.
What if we do, in fact, find out that what happened is Biden was diagnosed with cancer and undergoing chemo and that caused all of this? And before you dismiss it, he didn't have much hair to lose, he wasn't in public all that much, he did look Gaut, and he had numerous brain lapses and Gerald Ford type incidents.
I'm not going to say that it is IMPOSSIBLE that Biden was diagnosed with prostate cancer AFTER last year's June debate, but I do not for one second believe that he learned it since January 20, 2025, either. Not with bone metastasis (even the cited example of Frank Zappa, he was diagnosed in 1990 and died at the end of 1993).
I have NO TOLERANCE for the MAGA folks who want to say "Biden lied" when they support the biggest liar of them all. But I likewise have NO TOLERANCE for what looks to me to be very similar to the final days of another Pennsylvania Joe (the football coach at Shower U), who all of a sudden announced he had lung cancer when the gates were closing in on him as reporters unearthed more about Sandusky.
