Joe Biden’s verbal gaffes, faltering voice and other troubling symptoms have drawn intense attention to the US president’s mental acuity, with health experts calling on him and his rival Donald Trump to pass additional cognitive tests while warning against jumping to conclusions.
Experts say such tests could either help disprove speculation that the 81-year-old president’s mental condition is deteriorating at a worrying rate — or confirm it — and give voters insight into the mental abilities of Trump, who himself has been prone to verbal lapses.
But they warn that reliable diagnosis cannot be made remotely.
The Democrat’s campaign has faced stiff opposition since Biden’s poor performance in a debate with Trump two weeks ago, with many officials in his own party questioning his ability to lead the country for four more years.
And it didn’t help when Biden mistakenly referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as his archenemy Vladimir Putin at a summit in Washington earlier this week, but quickly corrected himself later.
Dennis Selkow, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School, said the core issue is whether Biden is suffering from “the normal age-related process” or “something that represents a neurologic disease.”
“Making a mistake in a name is not automatically a sign of dementia or Alzheimer’s,” he told AFP.
But Selkoe, who sees many patients with neurodegenerative problems, said Biden appears to have “the appearance of an early Parkinson’s patient” — including his slow, stiff gait and his low, sometimes barely audible voice, which could be a condition known as hypophonia.
Detailed Testing
Biden underwent a full physical in February. A published summary of the results showed that a “highly detailed neurologic examination” ruled out Parkinson’s.
However, no details were given about the actual nature of the tests or their results.
Has the neurological disease only developed in the last five months? Selkoe said that if testing had been widespread in February, early signs of the nascent disease would have been caught.
In an editorial published in March, the scientific journal Lancet called for standardized procedures for checking on the health of current and future presidents to protect American voters from “an epidemic of speculation, misinformation, and slander.”
In the absence of such reliable testing, “the American public relies on reports voluntarily issued by politicians’ personal physicians,” the magazine said.
Jay Olshansky, an expert on aging at the University of Illinois at Chicago, made a similar point, saying, “We believe the time has come for full transparency.”
He urged both major presidential candidates to pass a cognitive test, which former President Trump has frequently challenged Biden to pass.
Several such tests, including those known as the MMSE and the MoCA, are available either for initial screening or as part of a more comprehensive series of tests.
Biden has said he passes a cognitive test every day as he carries out his presidential duties.
But “I don’t think it’s the same,” Selkoe said. It’s one thing to be able to perform familiar tasks that have been done for years, he said, while being able to repeat a list of words heard five minutes ago, as some tests require, is another.
At a news conference Thursday, the president said he was willing to undergo a new neurological examination if his doctors recommended it, but “nobody is advising me on that right now.”
Stereotypes on aging
Alison Sekuler, president of Baycrest Academy, a hospital that specializes in caring for the elderly, said aging causes changes in a person’s brain.
“Basically, waste is accumulating in the brain,” he told AFP, adding that some parts of the brain are atrophying or shrinking, including those important for memory.
He said the early stage, called “mild cognitive impairment,” can sometimes develop into Alzheimer’s or another type of dementia.
Sekuler said that during the recent debate, both Biden and Trump (who is 78) “demonstrated some problems staying on track on a question.” He recommended both get tested.
But, he added, “we’re really only talking about one of them right now, because it matches our stereotypical perception of aging.”
Olshansky also denounced “rampant” ageism, and cited a recent magazine cover that used Walker as a symbol of the Biden-Trump race.
He said that although there is a minimum age limit for future US presidents – that is, they must be at least 35 years old – there is no maximum limit.
What he called “crystallized intelligence,” or the ability to use past experience to improve one’s reasoning skills, “becomes more and more robust” with age.
Olshansky co-authored a 2020 study that estimated Biden had a 95 percent chance of surviving his first term, based on the average life expectancy for someone his age and individual risk factors.
But four years later, a similar calculation on a man four years older gave Biden a much lower chance of survival: just 75 percent.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
