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October 21, 2008

The New York Times and McCain's health

Rick Moran
No doubt that the New York Times is hopeful that this line of attack against John McCain will have better results than their efforts to smear him by knowingly printing false information about an allged "affair" McCain was supposed to have had with a lobbyist.

In this scurrilous piece, Larry Altman actually goes for the twofer; McCain is too old and by the way, did you know he had CANCER?

Not only that, Altman either deliberately (or through astonishing ignorance) mis-diagnoses McCain's actual bout with cancer, trying to make it seem worse than it was.

Marc Siegel writing in the New York Post:

In May, I joined 19 other medical journalists (including two other MDs) to review 1,000-plus pages of McCain's medical records. Altman, a non-practicing physician, wasn't invited and has never seen the entire record. But representatives of many major media outlets did.

Yet the Times just ran Altman's Page One piece asserting that the release "leaves questions, even confusion, about his cancer. . . A critical question concerns inconsistencies in medical opinions about the severity of his melanoma." Not true.

The surgery to the left side of McCain's face back in 2000 was extensive, removing the melanoma and reconstructing his face. But the records resolved all questions. I was able to look through the pages easily in the three hours allotted, as most records were administrative notes, with little bearing on his actual care.

The pre-surgery skin biopsies of McCain's left temple speculated that the melanoma could have spread. But such biopsies are preliminary. The extensive and definitive, post-op reports showed clearly that it was an isolated melanoma, large but curable. All 33 lymph nodes, including the most predictive "sentinel" node, came back cancer free.

What possible reason would Altman have in speculating on something he knows little or nothing about? It couldn't be that there was a political agenda being advanced by the Times now could it?

Articles about the health of the candidates - both candidates - are fair game. But perhaps it is too much to ask the Times to leave their obvious bias behind in order to give us a factual accounting of John McCain's courageous struggle with serious illness and how there is little chance it will affect him as president if he is elected.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky

Posted at 09:36 AM | Email | | | Share Share
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