While Joe Biden’s verbal gaffes, shaky voice and other troubling signs have brought intense focus on the US president’s mental acuity, health experts are calling out him and his rival donald trump to pass additional cognitive tests, even warning against jumping to conclusions.
Such tests, experts say, could help repudiate speculation that the 81-year-old president’s mental state is in worrying decline – or else confirm it – and could enlighten voters about the mental capabilities of Trump, who has had his own share. of verbal slips.
But reliable diagnoses, they warn, cannot be made remotely.
Since Biden’s disastrous performance in his debate with Trump two weeks ago, the Democrat’s campaign has faced fierce opposition. A growing number of officials from his own party question his ability to lead the country for another four years.
And it didn’t help when, at a summit in Washington earlier this week, Biden wrongly presented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as his enemy. Vladimir Putinbefore quickly correcting himself.
Dennis Selkoe, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School, said the fundamental question is whether Biden is suffering from “a normal age-related process” or “something that represents a neurological disease.”
“Making a mistake with a name is not automatically a sign of dementia or Alzheimer’s,” he told AFP.
But Selkoe, who sees many patients with neurodegenerative conditions, said Biden appears to have the “appearance of an early Parkinson’s patient” — including his slow, stiff gait and low, sometimes barely audible voice, which could be a known condition. like hypophonia.
– Detailed tests –
In February, Biden underwent a complete physical exam. A published summary of her results indicated that an “extremely detailed neurological examination” ruled out Parkinson’s disease.
But no details were provided about the exact nature of the tests or their results.
Could a neurological disease have taken root in just the last five months? If the February exams had been comprehensive, Selkoe said, there should have been early signs of an incipient condition.
In a March editorial, the scientific journal Lancet called for standardized procedures for examining the health of sitting and future presidents in order to protect American voters from a “pestilence of speculation, disinformation and slander.”
In the absence of such reliable tests, “the U.S. public remains beholden to reports voluntarily released by politicians’ personal doctors,” the paper said.
Jay Olshansky, an aging expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago, expressed a similar view, saying, “We think the time has come for full transparency.”
He urged the two leading presidential candidates to pass a cognitive test, something former President Trump often challenged Biden to do.
Several of these tests, including those known as MMSE and MoCA, are available for initial screening or as part of a more comprehensive battery of tests.
Biden said he effectively passes a cognitive test every day, simply by carrying out his presidential duties.
But “I don’t think it’s the same thing,” Selkoe said. Being able to perform familiar tasks we’ve done for years is one thing, he said, while being able to repeat a list of words heard five minutes earlier, as some tests require, is another.
At a news conference on Thursday, the president said he would be willing to undergo a new neurological exam if his doctors recommended it, but that “no one is suggesting that to me right now.”
– Stereotypes about aging –
Aging changes the brain, said Allison Sekuler, president of Baycrest Academy, a hospital specializing in senior care.
“Garbage is basically accumulating in the brain,” she told AFP, adding that parts of the brain atrophy or shrink, including parts important for memory.
An early stage known as “mild cognitive impairment” can sometimes develop into Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia, she said.
During the recent debate, both Biden and Trump — who is 78 years old — “exhibited some sort of problem in terms of being able to stay on track with a question,” Sekuler said, recommending that both men undergo testing.
But, she added, “we’re really only talking about one of them right now, because that aligns with our stereotype of what aging is.”
Olshansky also denounced what he called “raging” ageism, citing a recent magazine cover that used a walker as a symbol of the Biden-Trump race.
He noted that while there is a minimum age limit for US presidential candidates – they must be at least 35 years old – there is no upper limit.
What he called “crystallized intelligence,” or the ability to use past experience to improve reasoning skills, “gets stronger and stronger” with age.
Olshansky co-authored a 2020 study that gave Biden a 95 percent chance of surviving his first term, based on the average life expectancy of someone his age plus personal risk factors.
But a similar calculation four years later, on a man now four years older, gave Biden a much lower probability of survival: just 75 percent.
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