Good news: McCain is in good health
The Senator released nearly 1,200 pages of medical records spanning from ’00 through this year to the Associated Press and they are reporting that McCain “appears cancer-free, has a strong heart and is in otherwise general good health.”
This will hopefully assuage the “concerns” ABC News’ Charles Gibson expressed yesterday about McCain’s medical history, as Newsbusters’ Brent Baker noted here. Snippets:
Not waiting until the actual Friday release of John McCain’s medical records, on Thursday’s World News anchor Charles Gibson (who’s 65) and Dr. Tim Johnson (who at 72 is older than McCain) speculated about McCain’s health. Gibson wondered about “psychological damage” from his POW captivity. Assured there’s no evidence of that, Gibson jumped to wonder how much longer McCain has to live, a question which led Johnson to warn, that while McCain may live another 16 years, there’s a decent chance he’ll develop “dementia.”
Gibson asked: “There’s also an enormous amount of medical records involving the time that he was in captivity in North Vietnam to check to see what physical damage he suffered and maybe what psychological damage.” Johnson replied that Navy psychiatrists monitored McCain “for many years after his release. They found no evidence of any serious problem. And he strongly denies any symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.” Gibson pounced with a new line of fear: “But he’s 71 years old. What do the actuarial tables say about a man who’s 71 years old?” Johnson explained they say he should live to 87, but: “Much more difficult, of course, to predict any change in mental acuity. At age 71, there’s about a 30 percent chance of developing serious memory loss or even dementia.”
Johnson did at least add: “But experts point out that with aging maybe some skills such as judgment get better.”
Ah. What would we do without our beloved Mainscream Media to inform us on the Important Things?
Related: After initially saying earlier this month that she wouldn’t release her tax records, Cindy McCain today released her part of her 2006 tax returns. Does this mean that the DNC, who attacked Mrs. McCain after her initial refusal to release her tax returns, will leave her alone? I mean, especially considering the fact that the spouses of the candidates are supposed to be off limits – unless we’re talking about those who aren’t married to Senator Barack Obama.