Donald Trump’s doctors have credibility gap as confusion swirls around his condition
- Suspicions have been raised for years about the amount of pressure Trump puts on his doctors
- Pronouncements on the president since he was diagnosed with Covid-19 raise more questions than answers
The world fixated on every word uttered by Donald Trump’s White House doctor Sean Conley over the weekend, temporarily elevating the importance of the former US Navy emergency medic above the US president, who has a reputation for dubious medical assessments.
It still is not clear how much of the comments by Dr Conley – an osteopath who was promoted in 2018 to replace a controversial predecessor – is dictation from Trump, the latter having confounded and frustrated many public health experts with his assessments about Covid-19 since the pandemic hit the United States.
Most have dismissed Trump’s insistence earlier this year, for example, that hydroxychloroquine could effectively treat Covid-19 as well ashis suggestion that disinfectants and ultraviolet light could also work.
“Conley refused to answer direct questions about how bad the president’s condition was, and this is not just from me; the [White House] chief of staff [Mark Meadows] has issued contradictory statements,” Benhur Lee, the Ward-Coleman chair in microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, said. “Treatments are never without side-effects, so doctors are usually conservative and give treatments when they are indicated clinically.