President Biden is in good neurological health and hasn’t seen a top Parkinson’s disease specialist since his annual physical, the White House doctor said in a new public letter.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s personal physician, wrote that the president has not been seen by Dr. Kevin Cannard since the Feb. 28 checkup, suggesting that the neurologist’s regular visits to the White House are not related to Biden’s health.
“President Biden has not seen a neurologist outside of his annual physical,” O’Connor wrote in the letter addressed to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre late Monday.
The letter came hours after White House visitors logs revealed Cannard had visited the White House eight times in an eight-month period up to this past March.
It’s not known if Cannard has been to the White House since March because the logs have not been released for recent months.
Jean-Pierre pushed back against aggressive questioning by reporters at a White House press briefing Tuesday, insisting that Biden is healthy and is not being treated for Parkinson’s or any other neurological disorder.
O’Connor backed her claim in the letter, saying that “Dr. Cannard regularly visits the [White House] related to this general neurology practice.”
Biden, 81, is fighting back against widespread questions about his age and health after he delivered a poor performance at the debate late last month against former President Donald Trump.
Biden appeared to lose track of his thoughts and stared blankly into space at times during the debate and at a few recent public events.
He also seemed unable to forcefully counter Trump’s outrageous statements, like his defense of his handling of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system that can cause so-called masking, or blank stares, as well as tremors and other physical issues.
Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, has always struggled with a stutter, but his ability to express himself has occasionally seemed much less robust in recent months and years.
