Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.comment From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Health questions without answers Date: Mon, 2 Nov 92 15:45:13 EST Message-ID: \SE E;COMMENTARY \HD Health questions without answers \BY Amos Perlmutter The recent reluctance and hesitancy, later overcome when his doctors informed us of his good health, on the part of Gov. Bill Clinton's campaign to release general information on the candidate's medical history again raises the issue of the public's rights - its need - to know the status of a presidential candidate's health vs. the political tendency in the past to obfuscate and even hide such information, often with dangerous and far-reaching effects. Earlier the Clinton campaign had insisted that a detailed medical history and record will be forthcoming soon, before the election, but it also insisted that the governor's medical history was a "privacy" issue while assuring reporters that his doctors say he is in good health. History tells us that such information is crucial for voters, and it also tells us that candidates or incumbents have a tendency to keep such information under wraps. For instance, if the general public had known Gen. Dwight Eisenhower had already had two heart attacks, in 1949 and after his election in 1953, the outcomes of the 1952 and 1956 elections just might have been different. Certainly, such information would have been a key ingredient in the decision-making of voters. We know now the personal physicians of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy became political doctors in flagrantly deceiving voters with medical cover-ups. The diplomatic-historian Professor Robert H. Ferrell of Indiana University tells us in his recent book, "Ill-Advised" (1992), that "of the seven medical cover-ups in the White House during all the years from George Washington to President Bush," all were characterized by a singleminded rationale that was "to keep the inquisitive noses of the American people out of what, according to the people in the White House, was not their business." What's distressing is that physicians and other praetorian guards of the White House, sometimes working in collaboration with the president, covered up presidential illnesses, some of which were potentially catastrophic. The president's health is a crucial issue. We've seen that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, at critical junctures in international affairs and politics were seriously, even critically or incapacitatingly, ill - one paralyzed, the other deteriorating and suffering from a severe cardiovascular condition. Versailles and Yalta were watershed moments in U.S. and world history, and in the history of the 20th century when the future of the country and the world was being decided with two seriously ill and frail and failing men at the helm. Eisenhower's illness, detailed in Mr. Ferrell's book, is significant. The cover-up took place before the 1952 election. The public and the media did not know that Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack in 1949, and that he suffered from hereditary cardiovascular disease. The entire family, both his parents and his brothers, had a history of hypertensive cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and coronary diseases. Dr. Howard Snyder, under whose care Eisenhower had been since 1945 not only diagnosed him incorrectly, but, as a man with an intensely political bent, he engineered the Eisenhower medical cover-up. This was also the case with Vice Adm. McIntire, surgeon general of the U.S. Navy and FDR's personal physician, who had misdiagnosed the president for bronchitis. It was Dr. Howard Bruenn, brought in under the prodding of Anna Boettinger, the president's daughter, who correctly identified the president's real illness, a severe cardiovascular condition. Under his care, the president's condition began to improve. Even so, McIntire continued the cover-up after Dr. Bruenn's diagnosis during 1944, when FDR's health deteriorated rapidly. McIntire all but destroyed all evidence of FDR's medical history in order to cover up his own mistakes. Had it not been for Dr. Bruenn, FDR probably would have died much sooner. There is a national need to know the state and condition of a president and a presidential candidate, no matter what his age, or how fit or youthful he may appear. John F. Kennedy exuded youth, energy and health in his bid for the presidency, but the fact that he suffered from debilitating Addison's Disease was never mentioned by him or his assistants. His campaign, aware there was no cure for this disease, which is a failure of the immune system (although it could be treated with Cordizon), instigated a cover-up that arose, wrote Mr. Ferrell, "out of his [Kennedy's] concentrated, almost absurdly dedicated, efffort to achieve the presidency." Amos Perlmutter is a professor of political science and sociology at American University and editor of the Journal of Strategic Studies. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM