Artist Scott Adams, the award-winning cartoonist behind the comic strip “Dilbert,” announced Monday that he has an aggressive form of metastatic prostate cancer and does not have long to live.
“I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has,” Adams told tens of thousands of viewers in a YouTube livestream. “I also have prostate cancer that has spread to my bones.”
Adams expressed “respect and compassion and sympathy” for former President Joe Biden, who is dealing with the same “terrible disease.”
Over the weekend, Biden’s office announced the 82-year-old was diagnosed with a form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. “While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive, which allows for effective management,” a statement from his office read. Adams did not specify when he was formally diagnosed with prostate cancer.
“The disease is already intolerable,” Adams said about his experience with this level of prostate cancer. “Every day is a nightmare, and evening is even worse.” It’s unclear when Adams was diagnosed.
Adams is known for his hit cartoon “Dilbert,” a character known for its satirical office humor about white-collar, micromanaged offices. Adams first published the cartoon in 1989, and it earned him the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award in 1997. “Dilbert” eventually grew into multiple books as well as a TV show.
Scott Adams, the creator of “Dilbert”, the cartoon character that lampoons the absurdities of corporate life, poses with two “Dilbert” characters at a party January 8, 1999 in Pasadena. (Fred Prouser/AP)
In 2023, Adams started to face backlash from newspapers and publications that had been running the “Dilbert” cartoon for years over political commentary made on his YouTube series called “Real Coffee with Scott Adams.”
In the livestream on Monday, Adams said that because of the commentary and backlash he was seeing in some of the online responses to Biden’s cancer announcement, he expects some for his diagnosis too.
“People are going to say it’s because I got the COVID shot. There’s no indication that that makes a difference. People are going to say it’s something I brought on myself, they’re going to say it’s because I lived a bad life,” Adams said. “People are going to be really, really terrible.”
Previously, Adams has been open about his struggles with focal dystonia, a neurological movement disorder, and his treatments for spasmodic dysphonia, another neurological disorder.
In his livestream, Adams said that he had withheld his cancer diagnosis from the public but decided to come forward after hearing Biden’s announcement.
“Once you go public, you’re just the ‘dying cancer guy,’” Adams said. “I didn’t want to have to think about it.”
Adams speculated that his life expectancy is “maybe this summer.” But he said since he’s known about the diagnosis for so long, he has “sort of processed it.”
“Everybody has to die, as far as I know,” he said.
