Bandy Lee wasn’t the only alleged medical expert to pronounce then-President Donald Trump mentally disabled (so that one of the Axis plots to remove him from office without having to go through that annoying democratic election thingy could be activated) without actually examining him, but she was the one who exploited her unethical conduct the most effectively to get repeated gigs on MSNBC.
Finally Yale fired her, as she was habitually and noisily breaching basic professional ethics including the so-called “Goldwater Rule,” installed by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to prohibit members from offering psychological opinions about individuals they had not personally examined.
Please note that the rule didn’t make what Lee and others did unethical: it was unethical with or without the rule. It is unfair, presumptuous and an abuse of position and authority to diagnose non-patients from afar, particularly in a political context where such fake medical verdicts can be used as partisan weapons.
Yet there was cardiologist Dr. Peter McCollough yesterday, giving an interview on the web’s “Breanna Morello Show” and diagnosing Joe Biden with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s while opining that both may be the result of a bad reaction to the Covid vaccines. Before diagnosing the President, he explained that he wouldn’t give a diagnosis because doing so would be unethical, and then immediately diagnosed him.
Nice.
I’m sure that the good doctor would say, if challenged, that the Goldwater Rule only applies to psychiatrists, or some other intellectually dishonest dodge. No doctors should be opining on Biden’s mental issues at all, not a word, not a hint, because such opinions attract disproportionate attention and are given more credence than they deserve. In fact, a doctor who is so unethical as to make a medical pronouncement regarding a public figure he or she has never examined should forfeit any credibility, permanently.
Ethics Alarms 
Did McCullough actually diagnose him? I heard him say he shows symptoms of Parkinson’s and Dementia, but I didn’t hear him say he “has” those diseases. It seems like that falls short of diagnosis.
I take your point that a doctor opining at all might not be appropriate, and would probably be given more weight than it should without the doctor having performed a formal exam, but I’m not sure what you would propose as an alternative. Is it better that you, I, and the rest of the commenters here and elsewhere who aren’t doctors throw out our best guesses of Biden’s situation based on how Grandma acted when she got old? Isn’t that worse? And we can’t just not discuss it at all. So what’s left?
McCullough’s bigger point here is he thinks Biden’s symptoms might have been caused by multiple Covid 19 vaccine injections. If you haven’t heard of him, McCullough was one of the earlier and louder voices in the “Covid 19 vaccines are causing vaccine injuries” camp. (Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of the vaccines, for various reasons, though I was never completely opposed to them. I was absolutely opposed to the mandates.) I’ve heard McCullough speak or be interviewed a few times, but not enough to make any judgement about his reliability. Some people I follow and respect seem to like him, but I am ambivalent. In this case, while I appreciate that his goal, (I think), is to bring greater awareness to the possibility of vaccine injuries and hopefully spur more actual research into the subject, I think it’s a bad idea for him to be speculating that multiple vaccines might have caused the symptoms Biden is displaying without any actual evidence.
“Dr. Peter McCullough — Joe Biden may have Parkinson’s, dementia, and Vaccine injury.” That’s the headline at Citizen Free Press. Then it was picked up and repeated on conservative talk radio. A Dr. saying that for public consumption isn’t a formal diagnosis, but the public doesn’t make that distinction, and it’s his ethical duty to behave accordingly.
I will agree that no doctor should get on TV, be introduced as a doctor, and opine officially about a diagnosis, much less diagnose someone from afar. However, to say that “no doctors should be opining on Biden’s mental issues at all, not a word, not a hint” is incorrect. .
If a doctor sees something that looks like dementia (or any of the other items like Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Lewy Bodies, etc), they can call it out as a private opinion, just like the rest of us. I don’t think it’s wrong for my best friend, who is a geriatric nurse, to say that in her opinion, the President acts like the residents in the memory care unit she works in. It is her opinion, just as it is my opinion that he acts like several members of my family who have had some form of dementia. I don’t think that it is wrong for her to put in her two cents worth, or for a doctor to do so as well. Of course, were he her patient, or the patient of the doctor, they could not tell us he had dementia without consent anyway. Of course the fact that my friend’s patients are in her care in the memory care ward generally suggests a diagnosis anyway.
The idea that they cannot use their experience to opine on his condition when the rest of us are doing so, is like saying that my experience in energy technology causes it to be inappropriate for me to speculate on a new energy technology (that everyone else is speculating on), without getting my hands on it. However, anything I say, having the experience I have, should be qualified or understood as my own opinion, and not a full technological survey, unless I say I have actually worked with the technology to an appropriate extent, which I should declare, and so any statement by a doctor should be considered only their opinion, even if it is based on experience and greater than average knowledge. A doctor’s opinion will be given more weight, but so often will be the case if I opine on energy, with my background.
The unethical part of this, just as with Trump (who probably is a narcissist, even despite the ramblings of psychologists), is that this was on national TV and not given adequate disclaimers that this is only a private opinion. I would agree that this doctor was unethical, opining as he did on TV, but other doctors, off of the airwaves, should be allowed to opine without examining, just as I can opine on my specialties.
There’s another nasty aspect of this Biden apparent neurological condition situation. There are evidently therapies available to slow the progression of some of these conditions. I certainly hope Dr. (hah) Jill has made sure her husband, whom every Democrat (literally?) loves to death, has been seen by all available neurologists and is receiving the most advanced care on offer. I’m going to give Dr. Jill the benefit of the doubt and assume she has in fact had Joe seen by specialists. I’m not willing to assume the president has not been allowed to be seen by neurologists because “the optics would be bad,” and his condition is progressing faster as a result of the willful inattention to it and its obvious to everyone with half a brain symptoms.
Are interviewees responsible for the headlines the headline writers put atop the article written about an interview they’ve done?
“If a doctor sees something that looks like dementia (or any of the other items like Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Lewy Bodies, etc), they can call it out as a private opinion, just like the rest of us.”
No, he or she can’t, not without violating ethical standards. I doctor’s opinion about a patient’s health is a diagnosis—which is, after all, just an informed opinion. Delivering what is represented as an informed opinion—because that’s what it is—about a non-patient being treated as a patient is, as I said, an abuse of authority. There are no ethical strictures against an engineer, or a scholar, or an ethicist, opining publicly about what he or she observes, but when a doctor does that, regarding someone’s health issues, that is different in kind. It is unethical. It is also, treating a non-patient as a patient who does not get the benefit of doctor-patient confidentiality. Why haven’t we heard from dozens of doctors weighing in on what Joe’s symptoms mean? Easy: because they know it’s wrong.
Sarah, I think Jack’s right. Once you’re a licensed doctor and have the privilege of charging patients for caring for them, you just need to keep your mouth shut in situations like this. There must be standard responses physicians can give such as, “I am ethically prohibited from commenting upon a person’s health. I encourage everyone to see their physician on a regular basis,” when asked to opine on a public figure.
is this a new rationalization?
the Doctor’s Dodge: “I hold professional credentials or knowledge to assess things i directly examine, but I’m not directly examining this thing, so don’t take my claim that all these hallmarks are present as a diagnosis.”
This could also apply to things like a structural engineer opining on the WTC collapse, a police profiler opining on a serial killer, or (gasp!) a climate historian opining on the future.
Spot on as usual:
https://babylonbee.com/news/janet-yellen-reassures-nation-that-bidens-dementia-is-transitory