I don’t know if President Biden has Parkinson’s disease, and you don’t, either. But it is more than a little troubling that Joe Biden hasn’t had a neurological exam since his annual physical in February, and that the initial explanation from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about Parkinson’s disease expert Dr. Kevin Cannard’s visit to the White House was not accurate.
On Tuesday, the White House clarified that Biden was seen by Cannard at the White House on Jan. 17, 2024, as part of his physical ahead of his Walter Reed visit the following month.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed the purpose of the January visit on Tuesday evening after inaccurately saying during the press briefing earlier in the day that the Jan. 17 meeting was not related to the president, in response to a question from The Associated Press.
Dr. Tom Pitts is not Biden’s doctor and has not had a chance to examine him. But he is an experienced neurologist, and everything he said in his appearance on NBC News Tuesday seems . . . rational and logical.
NBC’s Tom Llamas: As somebody who’s a neurologist, what you’ve seen from the president over the last two years, what you saw at the debate, the last few interviews, the way he speaks, maybe the way he walks, have you noticed anything that gives you a red flag, as doctor?
Dr. Pitts: Oh, yeah. I see [him or them] 20 times a day in clinic. It’s ironic, because he has the classic features of neurodegeneration. I mean, word-finding difficulties, and that’s not, ‘oh, I couldn’t find the word’, that’s from degeneration of the word retrieval area–
LLAMAS: He’s also overcome stuttering, though, could that be part of that, too?
PITTS: No, this is not a palatal issue, or a speech discrepancy, which is very different from a limen-al dysfunction, actual word retrieval, where you pick a similar question or talk around the issue. Plus, the rigidity, monotone voice–
LLAMAS: Wait, go back to that. The rigidity, what do you mean?
PITTS: Rigidity, loss of arm swings, standing up robotically. You notice, when he turns, it’s kind of end-block turning, it’s not a quick turn. That’s one of the hallmarks of Parkinson’s, rigidity and Bradykinesia, slow movement. And he has that hallmark, especially with the low voice, they said was ‘a cold.’
[Pitts makes air quotes as he’s saying “a cold.”]
PITTS: Hypophonia, a small monotone voice, like this, over time, is a hallmark of Parkinsonism. I could have diagnosed him from across the [National] Mall.
LLAMAS: Here are some of the symptoms from Parkinson’s, we just had him up there on the screen, we can put them back. Um, what about the movement? Some people have pointed out the way he walks sometimes, it’s not very fast, small steps. Is that something that is common in people who are battling a disease like Parkinson’s?
PITTS: Yeah, it’s a hallmark, ‘shuffling gait,’ we call that, so little steps. Loss of arm swing from the rigidity. When we walk, we have a nice cadence, and as you see, he doesn’t really swing his arms. And end-block turning, meaning he kind of pivots, around his foot. If you said, ‘hey, President Biden,’ he wouldn’t go like this.
[Pitts turns his head and upper torso fluidly and quickly.]
LLAMAS: I also know, it’s very hard to diagnose Parkinson’s, isn’t it? It’s not simple, I mean, I heard it can be-
PITTS: It’s one of the easier movement disorders to diagnose, actually. It’s so clinical. And – I’m a Democrat. It’s just like, this guy is not a hard case.
LLAMAS: But I’ve had relatives who have gone through issues, neurological issues, and I’ve heard that sometimes Parkinson’s is not very easy to nail. You have to take a lot of tests–
PITTS: Eh, early on, if you’re just presented with, like, hallucinations, that could be a variety of things. Or just the cognitive problems, that could be Alzheimer’s versus Parkinsonism, and that becomes a little nebulous. But once you start manifesting the hallmark motor symptoms, slow movement, rigidity, “masked facies,” (diminished facial expressions), hypophonia. I mean, if a med student did not pick Parkinson’s on the test, they’d be remediated.
The assessment from Pitts indicates it is not crazy or paranoid to be concerned that the president has developed Parkinson’s. Pitts does not come across as some wide-eyed quack or hardline partisan; he wants both Biden and Donald Trump to take cognitive tests.
Back in September 2020, Joe Biden appeared on CNN and promised, “I’ve become a great respecter of fate, a great respecter of fate. I’ve seen too much of it in my family related to accidents alone. I guarantee you, I will be totally transparent in terms of my health and all aspects of my health.”
Biden and his inner circle could dispel these worries quickly by conducting another thorough neurological exam — the intensive and extensive three- to four-hour one that Pitts describes in the interview — disclosing all of the relevant test results, and making the president’s doctors available to the press, on camera, to discuss those results and answer questions.
The fact that the Biden team hasn’t done that suggests that they’re afraid of testing Biden, because they don’t know what they’ll find.