WILMINGTON, Del. — Beau Biden, the Delaware attorney
general and the son of Vice President Joe Biden, is being evaluated at a cancer
center in Texas, according to people with knowledge of his condition.
Two people familiar with the situation said Biden was being
evaluated Tuesday at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, one of
the leading cancer centers in the nation. The people spoke to The Associated
Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak in an
official capacity.
Biden's wife and other family members, including the vice
president, were with him. The vice president's office said he planned to remain
in Houston on Wednesday. A hospital spokeswoman said she did not have any
information.
Beau Biden, who suffered a mild stroke in 2010, felt weak
and disoriented on the night of Aug. 14 after driving to Indiana for a family
vacation, said Jason Miller, a spokesman for the Delaware Department of Justice.
Biden, 44, was initially admitted to Northwestern Memorial
Hospital in Chicago and traveled the next day to a Philadelphia hospital to
consult with his doctor. He was discharged and spent last weekend at home in
Wilmington.
The younger Biden posted a smiling photo of his wife Hallie
and himself to his Twitter account Tuesday morning.
"Touched by all your well wishes—thank you. Nice
evening in Houston w/ Hallie; will share update when we have it," the
tweet read.
Miller said Monday night that Biden was undergoing testing
in Houston to determine the cause of his symptoms, though he'd declined to say
exactly where the testing was being done.
In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said
President Barack Obama spoke by phone over the weekend with Joe Biden to offer
his best wishes for the family.
"A lot of people all across the country woke up with
Beau Biden on their minds," Earnest said.
The White House said the vice president had been home in
Delaware for the past several days before accompanying his son to Houston. It's
not clear how long the vice president will stay. He had been scheduled to join
Obama in Scranton, Pa., later this week during Obama's two-day bus tour.
The younger Biden's Twitter account on Sunday posted a photo
of him and his father sitting on a porch and smiling while sending a message of
encouragement to a Delaware team that was in the Little League World Series.
This isn't the first health scare for Beau Biden, who became
Delaware's attorney general in 2007. After a mild stroke in May 2010, he spent
a week in the hospital and more than a month recuperating at home.
"Stroke was the farthest thing from my mind when I went
in," Biden said at that time.
Biden's father has had health scares of his own, including a
life-threatening brain aneurysm in 1988, when he was 45.
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