Why Is Hillary Clinton’s Health So Controversial?

Hillary Clinton’s health is being debated by people who are not doctors. (Photo: Reuters)

On Thursday night, Katrina Pierson, Donald Trump’s spokeswoman, told MSNBC that Hillary Clinton has dysphasia, a neurological condition usually caused by brain injury, with symptoms including impaired speaking and reading abilities as well as difficulty understanding words. In the United States, the condition is often referred to as aphasia, which is most often caused by stroke, though it can also be the result of brain tumors, traumatic brain injury, and progressive neurological disorders.

Pierson is not close to Clinton and has no firsthand knowledge of whether such a diagnosis has ever been given to her.

Pierson is also not a doctor.

And the hits just keep coming when it comes to the Democratic presidential nominee and her health from those, both inside and outside her opponent’s campaign, who have no real knowledge of her medical history.

Earlier this week, Drew Pinsky, MD, the addiction specialist best known for the radio show Loveline and VH1 series Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, announced that he was “gravely concerned” about Clinton’s health, based solely on having read a 1½-page letter from Lisa Bardack, Clinton’s actual physician, released last summer.

A forged version of Clinton’s medical records has also been circulating around the Internet, supposedly written by Bardack. However, Bardack has stated that these fake medical records are “false, were not written by me, and are not based on any medical facts.”

According to the actual Bardack letter, Clinton is “a healthy 67-year-old female whose current medical conditions include hypothyroidism and seasonal pollen allergies. Her past medical history is notable for a deep vein thrombosis in 1998 and 2009, an elbow fracture in 2009 and a concussion in 2012.” Bardack also notes that Clinton does not use illicit drugs or tobacco products, eats a diet high in lean protein, vegetables, and fruits, and regularly exercises — with yoga, swimming, walking, and weight training being her preferred forms of physical fitness.

Bardack reiterates in the real records that “Mrs. Clinton is a healthy female with hypothyroidism and seasonal allergies, on long-term anticoagulation. She participates in a healthy lifestyle and has had a full medical evaluation, which reveals no evidence of additional medical issues or cardiovascular disease. Her cancer screening evaluations are all negative. She is in excellent physical condition and fit to serve as president of the United States.”

Last week, Breitbart, the conservative news outlet whose chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, was named chief executive of Trump’s campaign earlier this week, published an opinion piece by Jane Orient, MD, of Tucson, Ariz., the head of the tea party-related Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), also claiming that Clinton is “medically unfit to serve.” As The Daily Beast points out, the AAPS’s journal has recently published articles connecting abortion to breast cancer, vaccines to autism, and making claims that AIDS is not caused by HIV. These claims regarding abortion, vaccines, and HIV have been roundly dismissed and disproved by the mainstream medical community.

The continued — and seemingly unsubstantiated — claims about Clinton’s health seem to hark back to the days when hysteria was a legitimate medical diagnosis given to women, and women exclusively, when any cluster of ambiguous symptoms was slapped with that label.

Belief in hysteria as a disease suffered by women hit its peak in the early 1900s, perhaps not coincidentally around the same time that the suffragettes and first-wave feminists were organizing to guarantee that women got the right to vote.

It also doesn’t seem coincidental that today, with the prospect of seeing the first woman elected to hold the office of president of the United States, similarly nonclinical diagnoses are being volleyed around by Clinton’s opponents.

The fact-checking news organization Politifact has not only debunked the various conspiracy theories circulating about Clinton’s health, but also makes sure to call attention to the “Goldwater Rule” — something that many media outlets have also cautioned the public at large to remember — which holds that it is “unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion (on a public figure) unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.” The news media has been repeatedly cautioned about making any allegations about Trump’s mental health, as per the Goldwater Rule. An interesting question in this election is whether the rule ought extend to health claims about any candidate, for any reason, made by those without firsthand medical knowledge of the person in question.

When it comes to what we know about Trump’s health, however, Politifact also reminds readers that the only medical information about the Republican nominee came in a letter from Trump’s physician issued in December 2015, which insists that the candidate’s most recent lab tests displayed “astonishingly excellent” results and “showed only positive results.” In medical speak, the word positive is indicative of confirming the presence of a disease.