Speculation about President Joe Biden’s health is rife after the president’s poor debate performance, marked by a stiff gait and soft voice, and muddled answers. Also fueling conjecture is reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere that, according to visitor logs, a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease has come to the White House eight times in the past eight months.
The White House pushed back, releasing a letter from Dr. Kevin O’Connor, physician to the president, explaining that the specialist, Dr. Kevin Cannard, was at the residence in support of active duty service members assigned to White House operations, some of whom may have neurological issues related to their service. Cannard has only examined Biden during his annual physicals, according to the White House. The president, according to O’Connor’s letter and its account of details of Biden’s physical released in February, does not have symptoms consistent with “any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or ascending lateral sclerosis.”
Parkinson’s is not always straightforward to spot. Here, experts (who are not involved in Biden’s care) explain what people should know about how the disease typically presents and how it’s diagnosed.
The varied signs and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease
Dr. Michael Okun, director of the Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at the University of Florida and medical adviser to the Parkinson’s Foundation, says that Parkinson’s disease might be better called Parkinson’s diseases—plural—because the condition has many different causes and expressions.
“There are multiple causes for Parkinson’s and a lot of them have similar symptoms, but we tend to clump them together, because humans like to clump things—it’s easier to deal with,” he says.
For one thing, Okun explains, about 15% to 20% of Parkinson’s cases are associated with a genetic…
