The news around former President Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis is putting a spotlight on his physician, Kevin O’Connor, and whether he had taken adequate measures to monitor Biden’s health.
Biden’s personal office said in a statement on Sunday that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer last Friday after he was “was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms.”
His office said his cancer had spread to his bone, adding that “while this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”
The revelation has sparked questions about O’Connor’s care of Biden. It also comes amid heightened scrutiny around whether those in Biden’s orbit sought to hide concerns over the former president’s physical and mental acuity from the public.
Here are five things to know about O’Connor:
He has served as Biden’s physician since 2009
O’Connor has served as Biden’s physician since Biden was vice president to then-President Obama in 2009, according to GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences’ Medicine + Health publication.
O’Connor served as the Biden family physician after Obama and Biden left office and he was selected to be his physician when Biden became president in 2021, Medicine + Health noted.
Prior to serving under Biden, he spent 22 years in the Army, and was titled master flight surgeon in 2010. He also spent several years during the George W. Bush administration as a physician for the White House.
Last physical exam O’Connor performed called Biden ‘fit for duty’
O’Connor’s last physical exam of Biden, which was dated Feb. 24, 2024, described Biden as “fit for duty,” adding that he “fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations.”
His exam did not detail anything related to Biden’s prostate, but he did note that a skin lesion of his chest that had been removed in 2023 “was found to be basal cell carcinoma.” O’Connor noted that “no areas were detected which would require biopsy” regarding Biden’s skin cancer surveillance, saying he had “several localized, non-melanoma skin cancers removed” before he returned to the White House in 2021.
O’Connor also suggested that Biden was largely neurologically fit.
But the White House drew intense scrutiny, particularly during Biden’s last year in office, over whether his administration was being transparent with the public about Biden’s health, particularly after his stumbling debate performance against President Trump.
In the wake of the debate, reporters asked then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about transparency around Biden’s health, noting that administration wouldn’t release the full results of his last annual exam or make O’Connor available for questions.
Jean-Pierre defended the White House, saying “we have been one of the most transparent administrations when it comes to medical records.” She also added that it “is not the norm to bring the doctor to the podium.”
The White House was also heavily questioned over why Kevin Cannard, a neurologist that’s knowledgeable about Parkinson’s disease, has been to the White House eight times within eight months.
“Seeing patients at the White House is something that Dr. Cannard has been doing for a dozen years,” O’Connor wrote in a letter at the time. “Dr. Cannard was chosen for this responsibility not because he is a movement disorder specialist, but because he is a highly trained and highly regarded neurologist here at Walter Reed and across the Military Health System, with a very wide expertise which makes him flexible to see a variety of patients and problems.”
O’Connor seen as close to Biden family
O’Connor has long had ties to the Biden family. Sara Biden once said in a deposition, obtained by Politico, that “Colonel O’Connor was actually a friend and he — we would frequently ask for his recommendations if any of us had a medical issue.”
He was also involved while Beau Biden, Biden’s late son, dealt with brain cancer, according to Politico. The news outlet also noted that O’Connor also had some involvement around a hospital chain called Americore that Biden’s brother, Jim Biden, had done work on, which later became plagued with controversy and later went bankrupt.
Some on the right have pushed the theory that O’Connor covered up Biden’s health issues, though there’s no evidence that the Biden family physician has done such a thing.
O’Connor reported Biden had benign enlargement of his prostate in 2019
Though O’Connor’s last exam did not offer any details about potential prostate cancer, the Biden family physician had noted in 2019 that he was receiving treatment for an enlarged prostate, according to ABC News. O’Connor noted he didn’t have prostate cancer.
Dr. Kavita Patel, board-certified internal medicine physician who’s also a medical contributor to NBC News, noted it’s not uncommon to stop testing for prostate-specific antigen (PAS) around 70 years old, though it’s not always the case.
“Standard practice is to generally stop such screenings at the age of 70, but exceptions exist for older patients with longer life expectancies such as Biden,” she said in a column for MSNBC on Monday.
Physician draws scrutiny over alarming cancer diagnosis
Amid the looming questions around Biden’s shocking cancer diagnosis and O’Connor’s physical exam reports, the Biden family physician is receiving heightened scrutiny around whether he took adequate measures to monitor the former president, including cancer screenings.
Some experts have noted that even regular screenings can sometime miss signs of prostate cancer.
“Sometimes our tests are imperfect. And even if we’re doing perfect blood tests and perfect imaging and perfect everything, we don’t find things,” Alicia Morgans, a prostate cancer specialist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, told The Hill.
Experts also acknowledge that while earlier screening could have found Biden’s cancer earlier, some are also inclined to stop screening men past a certain point.
“Really, there’s not many people out there that will advocate for continuing aggressive PSA screening for men in their 80s,” Geoffrey Sonn, an associate professor of urology at Stanford University School of Medicine, told The Hill.
“In retrospect, I think that it’s likely that if he had continued screening against pretty much all guidelines, that they probably would have found this earlier.”
