Why Did MSNBC Play Softball With Dr. Emanuel About Biden’s Illness? by Miguel A. Faria, MD

In a recent interview on MSNBC, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former medical advisor to President Biden, raised some interesting questions about Biden’s serious illness, prostate cancer. Biden himself admitted that he was diagnosed with advance prostate cancer with a Gleason score of 9 with metastasis to the bone. According to Emanuel, Biden most likely had this cancer for a long time and the cancer could have started earlier than 2021 while Biden was President, alluding to the fact that it should have been detected earlier.  Emanuel further expounded: “President Obama had this test. President Bush had this test. It is a little surprising that the doctor didn’t report it, and it was elevated, that is another case of doctors not being straightforward with us—we’ve had several of them with President Trump, especially around his COVID diagnosis—and if that is true, that would be very troubling.”

I am confounded by the interview with Dr. Emanuel, which raises more questions than it answers. In fact, we can say that this was a failure of journalism and particularly of Joe Scarborough, who did not ask the proper questions. For example, why didn’t Mr. Scarborough ask Dr. Emanuel if he was one of the medical advisors who might have advised Biden not to have the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test done at all because of his advanced age, or he might have advised that Biden not do anything about cancer if it had been detected during his presidency or even before he gained the White House. The reader may be astonished that I raise these questions but there are some very good reasons why I do so.

We have just learned that Biden had her last PSA test in 2014 when he was 72-year-old and served as Vice-President! It is almost inconceivable that this could possibly be true.

In 2014, The Atlantic magazine published an article written by Dr. Emanuel titled, “Why I Hope to Die at 75: An Argument That Societies and Families—and You—Will Be Better Off If Nature Takes It Course Swiftly and Promptly.” Although 57 years of age and in good health in 2014, Dr. Emanuel said he hoped and wanted to live to age 75 and die. He would have lived a fulfilled and a good life and it would be time to exit. After age 75, Emanuel claimed life was a downhill spiral and not worth living. His family disagreed with him and said he was “crazy.” At the time, Emanuel was a respected bioethicist, the Director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the recipient of numerous awards.

Over the years, Dr. Emanuel has insisted in articles and interviews that the productivity of creative people reaches a peak at age 40 and plateaus by age 60. In other words, after age 60, even productive people create and produce little of value to society, alluding that old people especially those 75 and older are more of a burden to society than an asset and should exit life incurring no further costs to the healthcare system. For instance, after age 75 PSA tests to detect prostate cancer should not be done in older males. Women should not have mammograms or pap smears after that age. Neither should have colonoscopies after that age, etc. Therefore, it stands to reason that as a medical advisor to President Biden he might have advised Biden not to have the PSA test, not to have a rectal exam or a bone scan to detect metastases because of his age. Afterall, in 2021 Biden was already 78 years old. In his Atlantic article, Emanuel wrote that if we live longer than age 75, “we are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.” Unfortunately, this fits with the picture of Joe Biden even before he was elected president.

So, as a good journalist, as we assume Mr. Scarborough to be, why didn’t he ask these tough questions? What did Dr. Emanuel advise President Biden to do about his health, longevity, and medical treatment? We were left to wonder because the tough questions were not asked.

Dr. Miguel A. Faria is Associate Editor in Chief in neuropsychiatry, the history of medicine, and world affairs of Surgical Neurology International (SNI) and the author of numerous books. This article is excerpted in parts from Dr. Faria’s 2023 book Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience: Through the Prism of History, Neurobiology, and Bioethics.

This article may be cited as: Faria MA. Why Did MSNBC Play Softball With Dr. Emanuel About Biden’s Illness? HaciendaPublishing.com, May 23, 2025. Available from: https://haciendapublishing.com/why-did-msnbc-play-softball-with-dr-emanuel-about-bidens-illness-by-miguel-a-faria-md/.

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