RRPFI Rebuttal to White House Daily Briefing with Dr. Ronny Jackson: President Reagan Did Not Have Alzheimer's While in Office

SIMI VALLEY, Calif., Jan. 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- During the White House Daily Briefing on January 16, 2018, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, the White House doctor, speculated over President Reagan's health while in office almost three decades ago, saying it was possible that President Reagan experienced early stages of Alzheimer's while in office. 

It is a known medical fact that President Reagan was not diagnosed with early onset of Alzheimer's until five years after leaving office. President Reagan's own White House physicians, who had routine access to him every day of his eight year presidency as well as the 40^th President's doctors at the Mayo Clinic, found absolutely no evidence of the onset of early Alzheimer's disease in President Reagan until five years after leaving office in 1994.

"Dr. Jackson's performance in front of the White House press corps in general was superb," said John Heubusch, Executive Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. "However, he no doubt knows better. To speculate on President Reagan's health in office with no access to his medical records and in contradiction to the plain truth was just wrong. Our hope is that he retracts any credence he just gave to the myth of President Reagan and failing health while in office in order to set the record straight. President Reagan deserves no less."

Dr. Lawrence Altman, longtime New York Times medical correspondent, looked for the myth of this evidence of Alzheimer's in President Reagan and found none.  Altman, who examined the subject suggesting that President Reagan may have shown signs of illness in his presidency, wrote, "In my extensive interviews with his White House doctors, key aides and others, I found no evidence that Mr. Reagan exhibited signs of dementia as president."  Dr. Altman continued, "No other family member -- and not Edmund Morris, the biographer who spent seven years with Mr. Reagan in the White House -- publicly hinted that he showed evidence of Alzheimer's as president."

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT FROM THE WHITE HOUSE BRIEFING:

Q:    Doctor, can you say -- given the President's age, he's somewhat of a peer to where President Reagan was at this time in his presidency.  Can you say -- given that there is scrutiny of what was overlooked at the time with President Reagan, in terms of Alzheimer's and things he was then known to suffer from at a later date, can you say whether the test that you ran would exclude any of those things and what the possibility of overlooking something like that would be?  You know, how can you tell the American people that this time you're certain?

DR. JACKSON:  I can say that that test -- and I don't know President Reagan's actual medical condition and I don't know what his condition was like toward the end of his presidency.  I've read things and seen the documentaries and stuff, just like everybody here. 

But let's just assume that he did have some evidence of cognitive impairment toward the end of his presidency.  I think that I can reliably say, and I think that the folks in the mental health community out there would back me up on the fact that, if he had some type of mental cognitive issue, that this test is sensitive enough -- it would pick up on it.  He would not have got 30 out of 30 on the test. 

About the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute (RRPFI) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the legacy of Ronald Reagan and his timeless principles of individual liberty, economic opportunity, global democracy, and national pride.  It sustains the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, the Ronald Reagan Institute, the Reagan Center for Public Affairs, the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center, The Air Force One Pavilion and the award-winning Air Force One Discovery Center.  www.reaganfoundation.org

Media contact: Melissa Giller, 1-805-522-2977, mgiller@reaganfoundation.org

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SOURCE Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation