The White House said President Biden had met with a neurologist only three times in more than three years in office. But it would not say whether the visiting expert was consulting with the president’s physician about his health.
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President Biden departing Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in February.
An expert on Parkinson’s disease from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center visited the White House eight times in eight months from last summer through this spring, including at least once for a meeting with President Biden’s physician, according to official visitor logs.
The expert, Dr. Kevin Cannard, is a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders and recently published a paper on Parkinson’s. The logs, released by the White House, document visits from July 2023 through March of this year. More recent visits, if there have been any, would not be released until later under the White House’s voluntary disclosure policy.
It was unclear whether Dr. Cannard was at the White House to consult specifically about the president or there for unrelated meetings. Dr. Cannard’s LinkedIn page describes him as “supporting the White House Medical Unit” for more than 12 years. His biography on Doximity, a website for health professionals, lists him as a “neurology consultant to the White House Medical Unit and the physician to the president” from 2012 to 2022, which would include the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump.
Records from the Obama administration, when Mr. Biden was vice president, show that Dr. Cannard made 10 visits in 2012 plus a family tour; four visits in 2013; and one in 2014. Records could not be immediately found online for 2015 or 2016. Mr. Trump rescinded Mr. Obama’s voluntary White House visitors disclosure policy, so records are not available for his four years in office.
Dr. Cannard did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The White House did not comment specifically on the purpose of his recent visits. “A wide variety of specialists from the Walter Reed system visit the White House complex to treat the thousands of military personnel who work on the grounds,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.
Mr. Bates said that the president “has been seen by a neurologist once a year” as part of his overall annual physical checkup and “that examination has found no sign of Parkinson’s and he is not being treated for it.” He declined to provide dates of any meetings between Mr. Biden and any of his specialists but said “there have been no neurologist visits besides the one for his physical per year, three in total.”
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Source: nytimes.com
