“Dilbert” creator and political commentator Scott Adams has died after a battle with prostate cancer, his ex-wife announced on Tuesday on his YouTube show. He was 68.
His first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, revealed his death on “Real Coffee With Scott Adams” and said that Adams had a final message to his audience, including messages about his estate.
“If you are reading this, things did not go well for me,” Adams wrote on Jan. 1, 2026, according to Miles. “My body failed before my brain.”
A number of officials and commentators expressed their condolences over his death. President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, said that the “Dilbert” creator “was a fantastic guy who liked and respected me when it wasn’t fashionable to do so.”
Last year, Adams said that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which he described as similar to the type of cancer that President Joe Biden was diagnosed with, and indicated that he only had months to live.
“Every day is a nightmare, and evening is even worse,” he said in May 2025, making the announcement.
Recently, Adams said that his chances of recovering from his illness were slim, saying he had lost feeling in his legs and was suffering from heart failure.
“I can’t move any muscles,” Adams said on his YouTube channel. “I do have feeling, I just can’t move any muscles. And the solution as of today is we’re going to ambulance me over to a facility to get radiated and they’re going to try to radiate that pesky tumor that’s around my spine. If all goes well, and it gets more tumor than it gets good stuff, I might get my—at least ability to get some strength back in my lower body.”
He also said: “I talked to my radiologist yesterday, and it’s all bad news—the odds of me recovering are essentially zero.”
He has said that he tried alternative treatment options, including taking a combination of ivermectin and fenbendazole, which are generally used to treat parasitic infections, but to no avail.
“Please don’t recommend I take Ivermectin and Fenben. I tried that last year, via Dr. Makis, to no effect. There are claims of it working, but I am aware of no patient who benefitted from it. Neither are you,” Adams said in a post on X after his diagnosis was revealed.
In November, he made a plea to the Trump administration to allow him to use a type of experimental treatment for his prostate cancer. After his post was made, Trump shared a screenshot of Adams’s post on his Truth Social, writing, “On it!”
That same day, U.S. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to Adams on social media, writing that “the President wants to help.”
Adams started the “Dilbert” comic strip in 1989, which lampooned corporate and office culture. It was among the most circulated comic strips in the United States, leading to an animated series and books. “Dilbert” was dropped by a number of newspapers and other organizations in 2023 after Adams said black Americans who disagreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white” in a Rasmussen Reports poll were part of a “hate group.”
In recent years, Adams became a public supporter of Trump and had often posted videos that analyzed the president’s persuasion skills while also saying that his support for Trump has harmed his comic’s circulation.
