"Fit" for the Presidency?

Medical profiles raise questions, but are reassuring

When photographers are allowed to snap Jimmy Carter jogging, John Anderson swimming and Ronald Reagan riding horseback or climbing a tree barechested, the object is not simply to provide some lively pictures to spice up a dull campaign. The presidential contenders are not-so-subtly showing the electorate that they are hale and hearty, up to the physical rigors of the country's highest office.

But just how healthy are they? That question was raised last week at a press conference called by Dr. John Roglieri of Manhattan's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. An ambitious New York internist, who took advantage of the meeting to make available to reporters copies of his latest book on health risks, Roglieri complained that voters are forced to rely on assessments made by each candidate's physician, and that these are not standardized.

Though Roglieri's complaint is valid up to a point, Americans now have far more intimate medical knowledge of their leaders than have citizens of other countries, or than Americans had in the past. When Grover Cleveland was secretly operated on for cancer of the jaw and mouth on board the yacht Oneida as it cruised on Long Island Sound, the public was told that the President had had some bad teeth extracted. The public did not know about Woodrow Wilson's stroke, nor were voters told about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's failing heart. John F. Kennedy spoke to intimates of "my Addison's disease," but the public was told that he had "a partial adrenal insufficiency." Dwight Eisenhower was the exception. After he was felled by a heart attack, he and his physicians chose full medical disclosure, issuing daily bulletins that went so far as to describe presidential bowel movements. Lyndon Johnson was generous with details of his 1965 gall bladder operation--and, as a now-famous photograph attests, he even showed off his scar for the nation to see.

This year all three presidential candidates seem remarkably fit.

P:John Anderson, 58, is 5 ft. 10 1/2 in., 148 Ibs.; blood pressure 120/68. He has varicose veins that require no treatment, and a high-frequency hearing loss in both ears for which he does not need a hearing aid. He sleeps seven hours a night and is an avid swimmer, trying to squeeze in a 50-lap session each day. In 1974 Anderson was diagnosed as having mitral valve prolapse, a slight deformation of one of the four valves of the heart. The condition, not generally dangerous, is thought to be shared by up to 15% of Americans, but it produces a distinct heart noise, and so is known as the "systolic-click-murmur" syndrome. He has no symptoms but has been advised to take penicillin before undergoing dental work because infection sometimes spreads through bleeding gums. The antibiotic is intended to ward off a bacterial infection to the heart, something to which people with this valve condition may be susceptible. P:Jimmy Carter, 56, is 5 ft. 9 1/2 in., 151 Ibs.; blood pressure 120/80. Like all other Presidents, Carter has visibly aged in office, but he remains in excellent shape. Jogging three miles a day has brought his resting pulse beat down from 60 to 50 beats per minute. The most versatile athlete of the three candidates, Carter also likes fishing and tennis. He gets six hours sleep a night, and avoids hops, lima beans and Swiss cheese, to which he is allergic. His hemorrhoid problem appears to be inactive. He occasionally suffers shin splints from jogging.

P:Ronald Reagan, 69, is 6 ft. 2 in., 194 Ibs.; blood pressure 130/80. He had a 1967 prostate operation in which stones were removed. He has some hearing loss (attributed by his doctor, John Reynolds of Los Angeles, to age, and by Reagan to the noise of a revolver fired too close to his ear while he filmed a movie in the 1930s. He also has an arthritic right thumb, and suffers from hay fever. Reagan rides and uses an exercise wheel regularly. According to his doctor, the wheel has contributed to "his upper torso and chest muscles [being] really well preserved."

The candidates' physicians contend, probably correctly, that they have released all "significant" material. Some observers--including Dr. Roglieri--say they would like to see Presidents and candidates for the presidency submit to checkups by an independent panel of physicians, and the full results made public. It would be hard to choose, or certify, such a panel. Nor can there even be any real guarantee of future good health. After all, which American has not heard of someone who, a few days after his or her annual checkup, suffered a heart attack? sb

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