Dilbert creator Scott Adams announced on Monday that he has metastatic prostate cancer and only months to live.
The controversial cartoonist said on a YouTube livestream that former President Joe Biden's recent diagnosis — of an "aggressive form" of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones — prompted him to share his own.
"I have the same cancer that 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," Adams said. "I expect to be checking out from this domain sometime this summer."
Biden's diagnosis, announced Sunday, was initially met with a bipartisan wave of sympathy and well-wishes. But on Monday, President Trump and his allies began to push the narrative, without evidence, that Biden had intentionally withheld his diagnosis.
Adams — who has long been a vocal Trump supporter — didn't name names but said it was hard to watch some peoples' lack of sympathy for Biden, "especially because the public has all decided to become prostate experts."
"I'd like to extend my respect and compassion for the ex-president and his family because they're going through an especially tough time," Adams added. "It's a terrible disease."
Adams called his condition "intolerable," saying he's been using a walker for months and is "always in pain" that moves to different parts of his body. He said his morning show, Real Coffee with Scott Adams, is the only thing he does during the day, and he plans to continue it for as long as possible.
"If you're wondering if I'll get better, the answer is no, it will only get worse," he said. "There's only one direction this goes now."
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the U.S. after skin cancer and the second-leading cause of cancer death in American men. While it can often be treated successfully and has an overall five-year survival rate of 97%, that number is much lower in cases where the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.
Adams did not go into detail about his treatments, other than saying the anti-parasitic medications ivermectin and fenbendazole did not work for him. There is no evidence to support the claims that ivermectin — which was falsely touted as a treatment for COVID-19 — can treat cancer. As a California resident, he referred to the state's End of Life Option Act as "an option." Adams previously advocated for passage of the law, which allows doctors to prescribe an aid-in-dying drug to certain terminally ill patients.
It is not clear when Adams, 67, was initially diagnosed with cancer. He said he had avoided sharing the news because "once you go public, you're just the dying cancer guy." He said he was also waiting for his step-daughter's wedding, which has since happened, and saw Biden's diagnosis as an opportunity to come forward.
"When Joe Biden went public with his situation, I thought to myself, 'You know what, I'm going to slide under his story, and he's going to take away a lot of the attention' because, you know, ex-president," he explained. "If you're thinking about prostate cancer, you're going to be thinking about him as much as me, so it just takes a little of the energy away."
Adams rose to fame in the 1990s with his syndicated comic strip Dilbert, an award-winning satire of corporate culture starring its eponymous white-collar engineer. It appeared in some 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries before Adams' controversial comments about race prompted its widespread cancellation in 2023.
Over the years, Adams has written several novels and nonfiction books unrelated to Dilbert and weighs in on social and political events on his long-running YouTube program, which has some 174,000 subscribers.
He opened one of those livestreams in February 2023 by talking about a public opinion poll asking readers whether they agree with "It's OK to be white," which is considered an alt-right slogan. In his response, he labeled Black people a "hate group," a statement he later called "a hyperbole" but continued to defend.
Cartoonists across the country applauded publishers and editors for holding Adams accountable, pointing to problematic comments he had made in the past.
He previously questioned the death toll of the Holocaust, said he had lost multiple jobs for being white and falsely claimed that people who didn't get vaccinated against COVID-19 "clearly are the winners" of the pandemic (he acknowledged getting vaccinated in Monday's video). Dozens of newspapers dropped the strip in 2022 after Adams introduced its first Black character and veered into anti-woke plotlines.
On Monday, citing the reaction to Biden's diagnosis, Adams said he was bracing for a similarly mixed response and hoped to "reduce the time that people were being terrible to me online."
"My enemies — in other words, people who are Democrats, mostly — are going to come after me pretty hard, so I have to put up with that," he said. "But I'm ready for that."
Adams said his prognosis, while painful, gives him time to get his affairs in order and say his goodbyes.
"I've just sort of processed it, so it just sort of is what it is," he said. "Everybody has to die, as far as I know."
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