An open letter from concerned citizens

Dear former Vice President Joe Biden,

Thank you for your long service to the nation. As healthcare and mental health professionals, you can understand we wish to ensure the health and well-being of a potential President of the United States of America – not just on his behalf, but on behalf of all Americans.

We strongly advise and encourage you to follow standard medical procedures for a physical examination conducted on patients 66 years and older according to Medicare guidelines. As such, since you will be 78 when you take office, and the oldest person ever elected to this office, your examination should include an evaluation of your neurological health, including cognitive and mental health functions.

Without this evaluation, the American people will not have a clear understanding about the health and well-being of our President, which is essential for Americans to know of any president.

Your examination should also include a basic dementia screen such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. Your duty to this country is to reveal to the American people if any elements of your neurological and psychiatric examination yield pertinent results. The threshold for such revelations should be low given your potential position.

You should also be aware of an editorial authored by former President Jimmy Carter in 1994 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which he explained how the country is in "continuing danger" from the possibility that a president could become mentally disabled "particularly by a neurological illness." President Carter proposed a presidential fitness committee that could regularly assess a president’s neurological status by routinely administering a battery of cognitive tests to assess judgment, recall, decision-making and attention. Many of us in the medical and mental health communities agree wholeheartedly, and such a measure has been proposed by Congressman Jamie Raskin (H.R. 1987). But we do not currently have such a committee. We have to rely on you doing it.

The Office of the President of the United States is the most powerful office in the world. As such, medical care, medical evaluations and the medical status of the President have significant implications for the American people, who the President serves.

We strongly encourage you to conduct this examination, without fear of giving up your ambition to become President. Your health relies on it – as do American lives and the safety of our nation.

Warning Signs

These are the top 10 Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer's that we've seen and are concerned about. You can find out more about them by going to the Alzheimers Association

You can see many of these issues in the quotes and videos we've included on this page.

Videos

You can see many of the concerns about your mental state in these videos.

Discussion