U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans, serving her first term as the 2nd Congressional District representative, boasts an impressive list of career accomplishments, including her service in the U.S. Navy and as a geriatric nurse practitioner. As a medical professional, she should know that diagnosing someone from afar is strongly discouraged — and shouldn’t be done for something so tawdry as political gain.
Yet on Friday, the Kiggans campaign fired off a fundraising email titled, “Let’s talk about dementia.” What followed was shallow, self-serving malpractice.
“As the only geriatric nurse practitioner in Congress, what we’ve been seeing from Joe Biden has been heartbreaking,” the email grimly intones. “I took care of dementia patients for many years…I know that before they are officially diagnosed, so many are in denial of their symptoms.”
Biden’s debate performance was objectively terrible. Plenty of voters — even within the Democratic Party — believe it raised reasonable questions about his fitness for office. It’s also true that the early signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s can be imperceptible at first — a few forgetful moments or instances of confusion — but manifest ceaselessly over time.
The White House says Biden has undergone three physicals since taking office, which included neurological examinations, most recently in February. While he does exhibit signs of aging, including poor circulation in one of his legs, he has not been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, dementia or any similar degenerative neurological disorder.
Kiggans has never examined the president. Yet, writing in the first person, her email invokes her background as a geriatric nurse practitioner who “took care of dementia patients.” The email even includes a photo of her wearing a white coat, stethoscope hanging around her neck, to drive home the point that she is an expert in this field.
It is curious, then, that the email follows with this: “Biden and the Democrats are attempting to cover up and deny his cognitive decline.” Again, the email is titled “Let’s talk about dementia,” so it can be read in no other way than Kiggans concluding the president of having dementia and accusing the White House and Democrats for covering it up.
Surely Kiggans knows that her chosen profession has for decades railed against making medical diagnoses without examining a patient first-hand. To do otherwise is reckless and dangerous. It violates the standards that medical professionals pledge to uphold.
For instance, the American Psychiatric Association said, “Armchair psychiatry or the use of psychiatry as a political tool is the misuse of psychiatry and is unacceptable and unethical.”
The APA emphasizes adherence to “The Goldwater Rule,” a principle originating in 1973 that instructs “physician members of the APA to refrain from publicly issuing professional medical opinions about individuals that they have not personally evaluated in a professional setting or context. Doing otherwise undermines the credibility and integrity of the profession and the physician-patient relationship.”
The APA issued that reminder in 2018 when plenty of medical professionals eagerly and recklessly offered their opinions on the health and mental state of then-President Donald Trump. What was true then, is true today — and Kiggans should know better.
There are plenty of honorable, reasonable ways to criticize this president and to call into question his fitness for office. Kiggans and others have readily voiced them. But by straying into medical assessments, and to do so while donning a white coat, in order to raise funds for reelection is beneath her. It insults her constituents and sullies her office.
As Arthur Caplan, founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health, wisely suggests, “If you don’t like a political candidate, then go after their politics; don’t go after their health.”
The 2nd District is among the most tightly contested House races in the country. Kiggans would do well to seek reelection on the power of her ideas, the strength of her accomplishments and her vision for the future, rather than resorting to cheap, and unethical, political stunts.
