Former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse told the New York Times he was given three to four months to live in December after doctors diagnosed him with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He is now roughly 99 days past that prognosis, and fighting back with an experimental drug that he says makes him bleed from places no one should bleed.
The 54-year-old Republican, who represented Nebraska in the Senate from 2015 to 2023, laid out the brutal reality of his condition in an interview published Thursday. He called the diagnosis a "definite death sentence" and described the toll of the treatment in unflinching terms.
Sasse said he first sought medical attention after experiencing intense back pain. Doctors discovered pancreatic tumors pressing against his spinal column. The cancer had already reached Stage 4.
Pancreatic cancer ranks as the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. The National Cancer Institute reports that between 2015 and 2021, just 13.3% of people diagnosed with the disease were still alive five years later. An estimated 67,530 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2026, and 52,740 are expected to die from it.
Those are the numbers Sasse, a father of three, is up against. He did not sugarcoat them.
"Here's a hard fact: Ben Sasse's torso is chock-full of tumors."
That was Sasse himself, speaking in the third person about his own body. Doctors initially put him on 55 milligrams of morphine after the diagnosis. He described himself as "high as a kite" and battling "strong waves of desire to puke."
But something changed. Sasse enrolled in a clinical trial for daraxonrasib, an experimental targeted therapy developed by Revolution Medicines. The drug works by blocking mutant proteins linked to pancreatic cancer growth. He takes it orally.
The results so far have been significant. Sasse said his pain is down roughly 80% from where it started. His morphine dose has dropped from 55 milligrams to about 30 milligrams a day. And the tumor volume in his torso is down 76%.
None of that comes easy. Sasse described daraxonrasib in blunt terms.
"I take it orally, but it's a nasty drug. It causes crazy stuff like my body can't grow skin and so I bleed all out of a whole bunch of parts of me that shouldn't be bleeding."
He described his skin as bloody and "bubbling." He called the sensation "nuclear" and "electrical," and said his face bore the marks of the drug's effects.
"I don't even know what that is, but either acid or electric shocks produce a face that looks this hideous."
The side effects are savage. But Sasse is still here, past the outer edge of the timeline his doctors gave him in December. Health crises among public servants have become an increasingly visible reality in American politics, as recent medical emergencies involving GOP lawmakers have shown.
The drug keeping Sasse alive is still experimental, but its early trial data has drawn serious attention. In early trials for advanced pancreatic cancer, about one-third of patients taking daraxonrasib saw their tumors shrink. Most patients saw their cancer stabilize or improve. Patients lived a median of 13 to 16 months, compared with seven to eight months typically expected with standard chemotherapy.
When daraxonrasib was combined with standard chemo, the numbers improved further. More than half of patients had their tumors shrink. Ninety percent had their disease under control.
In October, the FDA gave daraxonrasib one of the first vouchers in a new fast-track program aimed at getting promising drugs to patients faster than ever. Revolution Medicines has expressed hope the drug could shift pancreatic cancer outcomes broadly.
Dr. Christopher Lieu, a professor of medical oncology at the University of Colorado Anschutz, framed the stakes plainly in an interview with his department:
"There are certain diseases where getting access to promising drugs may mean the difference between life and death, and pancreatic cancer is an example of this. There are not enough treatment options, and our patients don't have the luxury of waiting years for any regulatory agency to review data."
Lieu also acknowledged the limits of what anyone can promise right now. "The idea that the FDA has a pathway for accelerated review is important and exciting, but it's a new program, so I think there's still a lot we'll have to learn from it," he said.
That candor matters. For patients like Sasse, bureaucratic timelines are not abstractions. They are the difference between access and a death certificate. The broader question of how a lawmaker's health can ripple through governing calculations has come into sharper focus lately, as the possible early departure of Rep. Neal Dunn has illustrated.
Sasse left the Senate in January 2023 to become president of the University of Florida. He stepped down from that role at the end of July 2024 after his wife, Melissa, was diagnosed with epilepsy. The cancer diagnosis came last year.
His path, from public service to a university presidency to a fight for his life, is a reminder that illness does not check résumés. The Cleveland Clinic describes pancreatic cancer as a disease in which cells in the pancreas mutate and multiply uncontrollably, forming a tumor. By the time symptoms like severe back pain appear, the cancer is often advanced.
Sasse acknowledged the grim math. "There's too much Whac-A-Mole," he said, describing the challenge of fighting tumors that seem to crop up everywhere. But he also spoke with a clarity that went beyond medicine.
"I've continued to feel a peace about the fact that death is something that we should hate. We should call it a wicked thief. And yet, it's pretty good that you pass through the veil of tears one time and then there will be no more tears, there will be no more cancer."
That is not the language of a man in denial. It is the language of a man who has weighed the odds and decided to be honest about them, with himself and with the public. As the GOP navigates a season of political uncertainty, with major midterm investments already underway, the personal toll on individual members and former members is easy to overlook.
Several questions remain unanswered. The specific institution or trial site where Sasse enrolled in the daraxonrasib clinical trial has not been disclosed. The exact date of his diagnosis is unclear. And while early trial data is encouraging, daraxonrasib has not yet received full FDA approval, the fast-track voucher is a step, not a finish line.
For the roughly 67,000 Americans expected to hear the words "pancreatic cancer" this year, Sasse's story is both a warning and a sliver of hope. The warning: this disease kills fast and kills often. The hope: new drugs like daraxonrasib may extend lives that, until recently, had almost no options beyond standard chemotherapy.
The political world moves on quickly. Leadership fights brew, succession campaigns take shape, and the news cycle rarely pauses for one man's suffering. But Sasse's willingness to speak publicly, to describe the bleeding, the nausea, the morphine, and the faith, deserves more than a passing headline.
When a man stares down a death sentence and tells you exactly what the fight looks like, the least the rest of us can do is listen.
