Biden Has Lost Sanjay Gupta

This may be sounding increasingly like a broken record, but an increasing number of mainstream media figures have continued to line up and at least express alarm over Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week, if not call for him to drop out of the race. Now CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta has joined the parade. In an opinion piece published at CNN, Gupta doesn’t go so far as to say that Biden should step aside, but he does report that he and many of his medical colleagues believe that it’s important for the President to undergo “detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing.” He further declares that they believe that the results should be released to the public promptly for evaluation. He cites observations of “halting speech and an absence of facial animation” as key indicators leading to this recommendation.

For me as a brain specialist, it was concerning to watch President Joe Biden, and it quickly became clear that I was not alone in my reaction. Over the past week, I received more than a dozen calls, texts and emails from medical colleagues who, like me, specialize in the brain. It wasn’t that what we noticed was necessarily new but that it was particularly pronounced, and right from the start of the debate.

From a neurological standpoint, we were concerned with his confused rambling; sudden loss of concentration in the middle of a sentence; halting speech and absence of facial animation, resulting at times in a flat, open-mouthed expression. To be clear, these are only observations, not in any way diagnostic of something deeper, and none of these doctors wished to suggest that was the case.

The consensus from the doctors reaching out to me, however, was that the president should be encouraged to undergo detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing, and those results should be made available to the public.

I have, at times, noticed Sanjay Gupta tilting toward the left in some of his opinions, along with most of the rest of the people at CNN, but he doesn’t tend toward shouting or hyperbole. In this instance, he really doesn’t even touch on politics. Keep in mind that this guy is a practicing neurosurgeon. If you’re looking for someone to competently opine on whether a public figure is playing the game with a few cards missing from the deck, he’s probably just about the most qualified person you could hope to find, unlike some armchair analysts like myself. He is quick to point out that his analysis is not a diagnosis, but rather a series of professional observations suggesting that such a diagnosis is in order.

We were already familiar with cognitive disorders, but I had to go look up the definition of movement disorders, which Gupta also sees in Biden’s performance. There are a wide variety of them, but they are typically defined by either “an excess of movement or a paucity of voluntary and involuntary movements.” They note that stiffness, tremors, or loss of balance can all be symptomatic of Parkinsonism. (Not for nothing, but BIden’s physician met with a Parkinson’s disease expert this week according to White House visitor logs.)

Gupta has a documentary coming out this week called The Last Alzheimer’s Patient. As part of the development process, he underwent extensive testing, including cognitive tests. But he also submitted himself for lab tests checking for the level of abnormal proteins that may be present in his brain and his B12 levels, along with DNA testing looking for precursors that enhance the risk of developing dementia and/or Alzheimer’s. He said that all of the other doctors he spoke with agreed that Joe Biden should undergo the same extensive level of testing.

With the regular reminder that I’m not a doctor, I do come from a family with a history of these problems so I have some background knowledge in these matters. I have taken those cognitive tests. Some of them are very long and they are hard, even for younger people at the top of their game. I’ve never “aced” one as Donald Trump claimed, but I also haven’t “failed” one yet either. I’m familiar with the DNA tests that screen for a person’s likelihood of inheriting those traits because I’ve taken those tests. (Both sides of my family were prone to it.) I know about the amyloid plaques in the brain that Gupta was screened for and the abnormal proteins they produce. I’m already developing them. I haven’t reached the point on these railroad tracks that Joe Biden appears to be at, but I can see the station approaching in the distance.

The point is that new treatments are currently going through clinical trials and progress is being made. Joe Biden should submit to all of these tests and publish the results not just for the good of the nation and of his family, but for himself. Pretending there isn’t a problem simply to try to drag himself further in his re-election bid is not a solution. If Joe’s tests come back positive (and it seems as if there’s a rather good chance of that) there still may be time for him to get help and mitigate the issue. If that requires hanging up his political saddle after more than half a century, shouldn’t it still be worth it to him?