BWJones's Journal: Korsakov's syndrome and politics

So, I have been going back through George W. Bush's speeches for the last ten years and have found a very disturbing trend. Back when Bush was debating (the very quick and bright) Governor Ann Richards of Texas, the current President appeared to be a very different person. He was quick, could respond in a timely fashion and appeared to be on topic and contained logical progression. Current speeches however, are littered with rambling discourse that has no real logical direction, he does not answer questions with thoughtful responses and there appears to be a general muddled nature to his speeches unless they are explicitly written out and displayed for him on the tele-prompters. I believe that like the 40th president, the current 43rd president has a degenerative disease of the CNS, but this time it is something like Korsakov's syndrome and this is likely the reason for the paucity of press conferences (much less than 10% of Bush seniors).

My father (a Republican) and a neurologist nailed Reagan's Alzheimer's disease a couple of years before the Iran Contra hearings which was many years before it was publicly acknowledged. (Interesting side note about Reagan: I wonder if he had an early investigative surgical intervention in 1989 by injection of stem cells into his brain rather than the operation which was publicized "to remove a hematoma from the brain" after falling from a horse.....) At any rate, my Dad (love you Dad, but forgive me) has become even more right wing these days and is much less willing to acknowledge these possibilities, but I am planning on talking with him about this to get his perspective.

Another aside: Medical care of the Presidents of the US would be a fascinating book to write.....

So, as long as we are talking conspiracy theory here is a scary prospect that might be gamed by the Illuminati and fuel the paranoid among you :-) .......Bush Cheney get reelected....... Approximately one year into his Presidency Bush is acknowledged to have a degenerative disease of the brain and Cheney gets appointed president of the US. One year later, Cheney has a heart attack and Dennis Hastert is appointed POTUS........scary eh? This is the guy who along with Cheney received an advance copy of the Patriot act II.

Bleh

[pudge]

I believe that like the 40th president, the current 42nd president has a degenerative disease of the CNS, but this time it is something like Korsakov's syndrome and this is likely the reason for the paucity of press conferences (much less than 10% of Bush seniors).

I think no one could reasonably think this without doing a more complete diagnosis. This is frivolous.

My father (a Republican) and a neurologist nailed Reagan's Alzheimer's disease a couple of years before the Iran Contra hearings which was m

Re:Bleh

[BWJones]

I think no one could reasonably think this without doing a more complete diagnosis.Wow, he's good. He nailed it many years before Reagan even HAD it, too!

Pudge.....I am a neuroscientist and I have worked extensively with neurologic patients. Alzheimers is a progressive disease with varying rates of involvement. Reagan was exhibiting signs of his Alzheimers years before the formal diagnosis was made. Good clinicians can see the onset of these signs if they have enough experience with these types of patie

Re:Bleh

[pudge]

Good clinicians can see the onset of these signs if they have enough experience with these types of patients.

Good clinicians would never make a remote diagnosis.

Re:Bleh

[js7a]

Good network engineers would never say never telemedicine.

Good Gates!

[Naum]

Are you that rabidly Republican? Those partisan colored goggles sure have impacted your perspective...

Re:Good Gates!

[pudge]

Huh? It is "partisan" to assert the simple fact that such remote diagnosis is impossible? What crack are you smoking?

Re:Good Gates!

[Naum]

Heh, he didn't say it was a "remote diagnosis", just that symptoms were present years before...

Re:Good Gates!

[pudge]

We were talking about Bush.

And he does not know that there were symptoms years before. He can only retroactively guess at what could have been symptoms, without actually doing the proper workup.

Re:Bleh

[BWJones]

I think no one could reasonably think this without doing a more complete diagnosis..

You have your terms a bit backwards. Making an absolute clinical diagnosis would absolutely require more work-up and on this point I agree with you. However, the apparent deterioration in organizational thinking processes does make one wonder. If you follow patients with neurodegenerative diseases, from the point on clinical onset things become apparent, however if you go farther back, you begin to see things like we are

Re:Bleh

[js7a]

From a layman's perspective it seems clear that Bush is mentally ill. The repeated lies in the service of greed and revenge, disfluencies, and resort to violence are signs of psychopathy to me.

I think by focusing solely on the disfluencies, the overall psychological character is distorted. Bush is not a victim of his mental illness any more than he is a victim of himself, at to that extent his behavior in office and before has been criminal. The courts agree: Bush is a convicted drug driver who went A

Question

[LPetrazickis]

What are the effects of cocaine on the brain?:)

you can't count

[rdewald]

Bush is the 43rd POTUS.

GWBush's incoherent ramblings I think have to do more with his anxiety over the non-stop duplicity he is engaging in while at his private campaign rallies and cognitive dissonance over the substantive differences between his campaign talking points and what the people who read his briefings to him tell him is *really* going on both inside and outside this country.

He has a lot of more clinically compelling reasons for organic cognitive impairment i.e., 20+ years of substance abuse f