Best Wishes to Ben Sasse: Pancreatic Cancer Trends in the U.S., 1999-2024
Now with 2024 stats update
23 Dec 2025, Politico: Ben Sasse says he has stage 4 pancreatic cancer
Former Sen. Ben Sasse announced on Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer.
The Nebraska Republican shared the news on X, writing in a lengthy social media post that he had received the diagnosis last week.
“Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence,” Sasse said. “But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.”
The two term senator retired in 2023 and then went on to serve as president of the University of Florida. He eventually left the school to spend more time with his wife, Melissa, after she was diagnosed with epilepsy.
Sasse continued to teach classes at University of Florida’s Hamilton Center after he stepped down as president. He previously served as a professor at the University of Texas, as an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services and as president of Midland University.
Sasse’s statement on X is here:
Friends-
This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.
Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.
I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.
Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. […..]
It’s a long post, so you can go there to read it all. I will return to a part of it at the end of this post.
It’s that family Christmas letter no one wants to receive.
Prior Pancreatic Cancer Posts
This may seem like deja vu, in that a prominent politician died from pancreatic cancer not that long ago: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.
27 Sep 2024: Cancer Watch: Pancreatic Cancer, Young Adults, and Men’s Health
20 Jul 2024: RIP, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: An Update on Pancreatic Cancer Death Trends
6 Jun 2024: Pancreatic Cancer Trends: 1999-2023, U.S.
8 Feb 2024: Top Cancer Types: By Crude Death Rate, 1968-2023
Unlike ex-Sen. Sasse, Rep. Lee was a bit in denial as to her survival chances when her cancer diagnosis was announced. To be sure, they didn’t announce her cancer was metastatic, but you can look at the survival stats I compiled in 2024:
Even when localized, the 1-year relative survival rate for pancreatic cancer is not good.
U.S. Pancreatic Cancer Mortality Trend: Large Jump Up in 2024, Driven at Older Ages
The spreadsheet with the updated info will be at the bottom of the post.
It is difficult to interpret the movements of rates for the youngest age groups — for ages 25-34, there are fewer than 100 deaths per year; for ages 35-44, there are fewer than 500. A lot of the movement can be noise.
But once we start looking at the ages 55 and older, we can see there have been some serious increases in the rates of deaths due to pancreatic cancer. It may be related to the rise in diabetes and other metabolic problems in general.
To be sure, many of the people suffering from pancreatic cancer do not have diabetes. I am not linking some of the papers I reviewed, but some of the increase in pancreatic cancer deaths in official stats may come from better detection… right before people die. Given that most pancreatic cancer incidence and death is in older people, the biases are such that in prior years, the cancer may have gone undetected and deaths may have been recorded due to other causes.
That’s always the issue with data — it can be difficult to tell if this is a real signal or not.
Ben Sasse’s Message: Some Hope for Christmas
I said I’d return to Ben Sasse’s message:
I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.
But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).
With respect to advances, I asked Gemini to give me a comparison of current relative survival rates against 10 years ago:
These differ somewhat from what I have above, but are in the ballpark range. These show a significant improvement over the past decade.
In seeking stories of improvement related to pancreatic cancer, I found the Let’s Win Pancreatic Cancer website, which is filled with such stories.
In May 2014, Anne Glauber learned she had stage IV pancreatic cancer. She and her family were stunned and devastated, not knowing where to turn but knowing they had to do something urgently. That overwhelming fear and confusion became the genesis for Let’s Win.
….
Legacy
In 2017, Anne passed away after living three times longer than originally predicted. Today, Let’s Win is Anne’s legacy, and it stands as a valued resource in the pancreatic cancer community. It is a living testimony to Anne Glauber’s commitment that no one would ever again need to face a diagnosis like hers without resources and hope.
This is similar to my experience with Movember and Stuart. He was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer, fought til the end, and lived longer than the usual life expectancy predicted for that diagnosis.
Let’s Win highlighted some of the research breakthroughs for pancreatic cancer treatment from the 2025 ASCO meeting. For example:
Tumor-Treating Fields Improve Overall Survival
Final results of the phase III PANOVA-3 trial show small but statistically significant gains in overall survival in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer. In the trial, patients who were given the combination of tumor treating fields added to gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel in first-line therapy had an improvement of two months in overall survival compared with gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel alone.
The trial is the first to demonstrate a statistically significant overall survival benefit in locally advanced pancreatic cancer, the researchers said. The addition of tumor-treating fields to first-line chemotherapy can not only extend overall survival, but it does so without increasing systemic toxicity among patients. Patients who received tumor-treating fields plus chemotherapy also experienced prolonged pain-free survival and distant progression-free survival compared with those who received chemotherapy alone.
Much of the improvement in the treatments come not only from the researchers and doctors working on developing them, but also the patients willing to try and fight through to the end.
The piece above mentions “without increasing systemic toxicity”, because chemotherapy is generally poison. It’s trying to kill the cancer cells, but often non-cancerous cells are often killed (and the results can be nasty, such as one’s toenails falling off). For metastatic cancer, given how widespread the cancer can be throughout the body, the methods to attempt to treat can be very harsh indeed… it can be a question of whether the cancer or the chemo kills the person.
I wish Ben Sasse well in his treatment journey.
It is a difficult journey.
