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Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Letter: Unfair to diagnose Biden without examining him
Letter to the editor. FILE

Dear editor:

The Lake Report is a terrific local newspaper and I look forward to reading it weekly.

However, last week I was shocked by Dr. William Brown’s column, “With cognitive decline obvious, Biden made right decision“).

Dr. Brown is a respected doctor, professor and scientist. As such, he should never have said that U.S. President Joe Biden was cognitively impaired — because he did not run any tests on him.

How can any neurologist state unequivocally that someone is cognitively impaired without testing? This is especially true in Dr. Brown’s case because as a research scientist his results come from running tests.

Brown states that about 50 per cent of people in the president’s age range are cognitively impaired. That of course means that 50 per cent are not.

At 84, is frail Nancy Pelosi also cognitively impaired? One could go through a whole list of people who we could say are not impaired, but we really do not know.

Biden has spoken many times of being a stutterer from an early age. He has talked about the great effort it took to overcome it.

He has never been someone who could speak fluidly and with ease because of the constant effort it takes.  Because someone has this affliction, does that mean they are cognitively impaired?

And yes it was painful to watch him speak in the debate. He was just back from two trips to Europe and was obviously exhausted.

I am shocked Dr. Brown would make such a public diagnosis without seeing the results of cognitive testing on Biden.

Merijean Morrissey
Professor emerita
Brock University

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