My Take | Joe Biden’s health is no laughing matter
- The US president’s aides and allies, the Democratic Party and the liberal press are understandably reluctant to address the issue of the state of the 78-year-old’s health, and risk opening a can of worms. They may soon have a constitutional duty to do so
John F Kennedy was America’s first Catholic president, and his public image was the very embodiment of youthfulness and vigour. In recent decades, though, the truth has emerged about his lifelong medical conditions. He was already a very sick man by the time he took over the White House.
Besides the most serious, such as the once-fatal Addison’s disease, which involved the malfunctioning of the adrenal glands, and colitis, an ulcerous inflammation of the upper bowel, he suffered from myriad other illnesses including a chronic bad back and a degenerative bone disease.
He was mostly deaf in one ear and had to take any number of medications, some of which were self-medicated. By today’s definition, he would qualify as a drug addict. His lifelong use of corticosteroids might have caused his overly stimulated sex drive, an endless source of potential scandals that were well-suppressed at the time, thanks largely to a cooperative press.
For many years after his death, the American public knew less about his medical conditions than his sexual adventurism and assassination, the last being a source and paradigmatic example of endless conspiracy theories of the 20th century.
And no wonder. The sex, sleaze and violent death titillated and distracted public attention; his medical conditions pertained directly to the US Constitution and democracy itself. With respect to US democratic politics, it would have been almost impossible for Kennedy to be elected president had the full extent of his ill health been known to voters. And the seriousness of his incapacitating illnesses could have raised the possibility of his being replaced as president under a constitutional provision.