After a political career shaped by cancer, Biden faces his own grim diagnosis

By CHRIS MEGERIAN Associated Press WASHINGTON AP In Joe Biden s family there s a saying that the three worst words anyone can hear are you have cancer One decade ago his son Beau died from a brain tumor Several years later his wife Jill had two cancerous lesions removed in her own brush with the ailment Now it is the former president s turn Biden s office disclosed his prostate cancer identification over the weekend saying it has already spread to his bones Although the cancer can possibly be controlled with healing it is no longer curable The announcement is a bitter revelation that a condition that has brought so much tragedy to Biden s life could be what ends it Cancer touches us all Biden wrote on social media Like so countless of you Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places Related Articles After US cuts funding WHO chief defends B budget request by comparing it with cost of war Judge bars Trump administration from shutting peace institute that sought to end violent conflicts Critics say Trump s religion agenda will benefit conservative Christians the bulk The future of history Trump could leave less documentation behind than any previous US president Supreme Court allows Trump to strip protections from selected Venezuelans deportations could follow Even before the finding Biden s post-presidency was shadowed by questions about his robustness and whether he should have run for reelection As questions about his fitness for office mounted he abandoned the campaign and Donald Trump retook the presidency by defeating Kamala Harris As the -year-old Biden works to safeguard his damaged political legacy he ll also be fighting a disorder that shaped the final chapters of his decades-long career Biden was serving as Barack Obama s vice president when Beau died in He decided not to seek the Democratic nomination the following year which helped clear a path for Hillary Clinton who lost to Trump in Valerie Jarrett a longtime Obama adviser reported Biden longed to channel his grief into action and figure out how we can do better on treating cancer to make sure that other people didn t have to go through what he went through The effort was formalized as a White House task force with Biden in charge After a sparse years out of office Biden re-entered politics to campaign against Trump in The heartache from Beau s death was never far from the surface though His eldest son had been Delaware s attorney general and often viewed as Biden s political successor Beau should be the one running for president not me Biden declared a thought he echoed on a multitude of occasions He made fighting cancer a focus for his presidency resurrecting a moonshot initiative to increase funding for research and improve restoration He unveiled the initiative at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in echoing the Democratic icon s famous speech declaring that we will go to the moon six decades earlier Beating cancer is something we can do together Biden revealed By this point he had already signed bill known as the PACT Act to expand healthcare benefits for veterans The law guarantees recovery for chronic illnesses blamed on burn pits which were used to dispose of chemicals tires plastics physiological equipment and human waste on military bases Biden left no doubt that he deduced Beau s death resulted from his institution with the National Guard in Iraq When they came home a large number of of the fittest and best warriors that we sent to war were not the same headaches numbness dizziness cancer he announced My son Beau was one of them Denis McDonough who led the Veterans Affairs Department under Biden explained the president didn t talk about Beau s death during plan discussions But he declared it was clear that Biden knew the experience that other families were having and he was going to be damn sure that we weren t going to miss an opportunity to address that McDonough recalled that Biden demanded the new law to take effect as expeditiously as doable He had an option to stretch it out he declared He commented no way The following year first lady Jill Biden had two cancerous lesions removed one above her right eye and the other on her chest They were both basal cell carcinoma Learning of the determination was a little harder than I thought she notified The Associated Press during a trip to Africa I m lucky she stated Believe me I am so lucky that they caught it they removed it and I m healthy Biden s cancer assessment is not the first time that he s faced his own mortality Months after ending his first presidential campaign in he collapsed in a New York hotel room In his memoir Promises to Keep he described lightning flashing inside my head a powerful electrical surge and then a rip of pain like I d never felt before He had suffered a brain aneurysm that required surgery Biden wrote that I had no real fear of dying I d long since accepted the fact that life s guarantees don t include a fair shake McDonough imagined that Biden would feel similarly about his current situation He s dependably on to the next fight he commented