In May 1996, journalist Alistair Cooke remarked, “I thought I knew everything about the physical condition of President Kennedy and how much of it was, by an unspoken agreement in those days, kept secret.” Cooke describes a “code, unwritten, never brought up, which would have made it tasteless to mention such things”. [1]
He describes how, during the 1960 Democratic primary campaign, then Senator Lyndon Johnson’s team suggested that then Senator Kennedy had Addison’s disease. At the time, this was a “foul accusation” (although true) which was quickly denied by the Kennedy camp.
However, secrecy regarding the health of our leaders can be dated to much further back. For example, in October 1919, President Woodrow Wilson, with 18 months left in office, had a stroke which left him bedridden and partially paralysed. First Lady Edith Wilson became the intermediary between the President and his Cabinet, deciding which matters were important enough to be brought to her husband. The President’s inner-circle hid the true state of Woodrow Wilson’s health from the public.
Parallels can equally be drawn with the press silence regarding the health condition of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. According to Cooke, despite being President for 13 years, 95% of the American public said they never considered their president to be paralysed from the waist down.
Cooke argues that what he sees as an “admirable convention” of press silence regarding the health of public figures would today be considered to be a suppression of free speech.
Today, a quick Google search of “Donald Trump health” produces 737 million results. His Wikipedia page includes an entire section entitled “Health and Lifestyle”. It reads:
In December 2015, Harold Bornstein, who had been Trump's personal physician since 1980, wrote in a letter that he would "be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency". In May 2018, Bornstein said Trump himself had dictated the contents of the letter, and that three Trump agents had removed his medical records in February 2017 without due authorization.
In January 2018, White
House physician Ronny Jackson said Trump was in excellent health and that his
cardiac assessment revealed no issues. Several outside cardiologists commented
that Trump's 2018 LDL cholesterol level of 143 did not indicate
excellent health.
In February 2019, after a new examination, White House physician Sean Conley
said Trump was in "very good health overall", although he was
clinically obese. His 2019 coronary CT calcium scan score indicates he
suffers from a form of coronary artery disease common for white men of his
age. [2]
Across the Atlantic, just two days after being tested positive for the coronavirus, the BBC published an article entitled, "Coronavirus: Prince Charles tests positive but 'remains in good health'" [3]. We have equally been receiving regular updates on Her Majesty the Queen's health. A day after Prince Charle's announcement, it was Prime Minister Boris Johnson who uploaded onto social media a hand-filmed video of himself stating that he had tested positive for coronavirus [4]. On the 6th of April, we learnt that the Prime Minister had been admitted to intensive care.
Perhaps 50 years ago, we wouldn't even have known that the Prime Minister had fallen ill. Today, we receive live updates on the status of Boris Johnson's hospitalisation (for those interested, he was given oxygen on late Monday afternoon, but has not yet been put on a ventilator). Is this transparency, as Alastair Cooke argued, a question of freedom of speech, or is it a necessity in a world which feeds off 24-hour news coverage? Today it seems unlikely that the government would be able to hide this kind of fact from the public eye. What's more, social customs have undoubtedly changed, as have our expectations from our governments. We feel that we have a right to know information on the personal lives of public figures provided it is in the public interest. And it does seem to be in the public interest to know who is really running the country, be it Edith Wilson or Dominic Raab.
[1] Cooke, A., 1996. BBC Radio 4 - Letter From America By Alistair Cooke, Kennedy's Rocking Chair - Kennedy's Rocking Chair - 3 May 1996. [online] BBC. Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3kPm7Z2hMNmXcQjSt6JxdK0/kennedys-rocking-chair-3-may-1996> [Accessed 6 April 2020].
[2] En.wikipedia.org. 2020. Donald Trump. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump> [Accessed 6 April 2020].
[3] BBC News. 2020. Prince Charles Tests Positive For Coronavirus. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52033845> [Accessed 6 April 2020].
[4] BBC News. 2020. PM Says He's Tested Positive For Coronavirus. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-52065395/coronavirus-boris-johnson-says-he-s-tested-positive> [Accessed 6 April 2020].