President Biden retains pushing again.
He’s not going wherever, he defiantly insists, and claims he feels simply superb.
However I’ve been listening to from docs who noticed Biden muddle by the June 27 debate and suppose he’s something however superb. One in every of them instructed me he’s sure Biden is affected by a motion dysfunction for which there isn’t any treatment.
A prognosis by somebody who has not examined a affected person is speculative. However the shared view among the many docs who contacted me is that we aren’t taking a look at a person who’s merely getting older. We’re taking a look at a person with a critical medical situation.
In a current column, I wrote that nobody can precisely diagnose dementia from afar. However docs inform me neurological motion issues may be simpler to detect.
“Each doctor I’ve spoken to agrees that Biden has traditional signs of Parkinson’s,” one of many docs mentioned.
One other famous the “masked face, clean expression, stopping as he shuffles alongside, delicate, hoarse speech and stiff arms as he walks — all Parkinson’s.”
Two further responses have been of explicit curiosity as a result of they got here from neurologists with a long time of expertise. So on Monday, simply after the New York Instances reported {that a} Parkinson’s specialist visited the White Home eight instances in eight months, I known as them.
“Once I was watching the talk,” mentioned Dr. Michael Mahler, who’s on the UCLA college, “there have been clues to me” that Biden, 81, was most likely coping with greater than the traditional challenges of growing old.
The primary signal for Mahler was “the best way he walked onto the stage, with a really stiff gait. Usually, the best way individuals stroll, they swing their arms, and he didn’t have a lot arm swing. Then, watching and listening to him, he had … nearly no facial features…. His blink price was actually, actually low, and he had only a few different actions.”
Mahler famous Biden’s muffled speech as nicely. He mentioned he couldn’t make a definitive prognosis with out a full bodily, lab work, remedy historical past and a five- to six-hour neurological battery of exams. However he mentioned that what he noticed have been signs within the “Parkinsonian” paradigm.
Dr. Jack Florin, a Fullerton neurologist who’s been practising drugs for 50 years, instructed me he has observed indicators of an advancing motion dysfunction in Biden for a number of years, they usually have been accentuated throughout the debate.
For Florin, there’s little question what’s occurring: He thinks Biden has a Parkinson’s variant known as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). He famous that singer Linda Ronstadt has the identical situation, as did the late actor Dudley Moore.
“When you have got PSP, your eye actions will not be regular,” Florin mentioned. “You’re wanting down and you’ve got issue shifting your eyes backward and forward. Individuals with PSP have what’s known as a set stare, and it seemed like he was simply staring, as a result of his eyes weren’t shifting.”
Over the course of his profession, Florin mentioned, he’s had lots of of PSP sufferers. In Biden, he mentioned, different telling signs included “low quantity and speedy speech with lack of regular rhythm,” in addition to “episodes of sudden compelled eye closure,” also referred to as blepharospasm.
Dr. Michael Mahler, a UCLA college member, mentioned that throughout the June 27 debate, proven in a screenshot from “L.A. Instances Right this moment,” he noticed “clues” that President Biden is likely to be coping with greater than the traditional challenges of growing old.
In Biden’s stiff gait, Florin noticed one other clue.
“He doesn’t have idiopathic Parkinson’s. That’s the most typical kind. Persons are stooped, usually they’ve a tremor, and normally it’s on one facet greater than one other. He doesn’t have that,” Florin mentioned.
In his opinion, Biden has PSP, which is “progressive, incurable and untreatable…. Because it will get worse, postural instability is the primary downside, and there’s a threat of falls. After some time, sufferers can not safely stroll. A cane or walker received’t actually assist, as a result of you’ll be able to fall over backwards. Because the illness will get severely worse, you’re primarily confined to a wheelchair.”
Two different docs who contacted me didn’t rule out the chance that Biden’s issues throughout the debate might have been triggered — a minimum of partially — by the negative effects of remedy.
“I actually couldn’t diagnose him,” mentioned Dr. Laura Mosqueda, a USC geriatrician who worries that individuals will incorrectly make the prognosis that the president’s downside is his age, although the world has no scarcity of absolutely functioning individuals far older than Biden. “I don’t care if it’s 81, 61 or 41. I don’t suppose that is about his age. It’s about — does he have a medical downside we ought to concentrate on?”
And that’s the appropriate query.
Simply 4 months shy of election day, the presidential election comes all the way down to a selection between somebody we all know and somebody we don’t know.
Trump, we all know, and many individuals think about him the better menace to the republic. And it’s no shock that readers hold asking me why he’s not the candidate whose celebration needs to place him out to pasture.
Biden, we used to know, however a stranger is now sporting his fits.
He owes it to voters and his personal celebration to endure a full bodily, cognitive and neurological workup and to make the outcomes public. If there’s an issue, it must be addressed, with braveness and transparency.
For his sake, and ours.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
