Throughout his years in Washington, Mr. Reagan had been portrayed by many pundits and political opponents as absent-minded, inattentive, incurious, even lazy. And his Presidency was marked by a succession of very public mental stumbles -- most notably his dismal performance in the first debate of the 1984 campaign, and his confused and forgetful accounting of his role in the Iran-contra affair.
But even with the hindsight of Mr. Reagan's diagnosis, his four main White House doctors say they never detected any evidence that his forgetfulness was more than just that.
Yours,
Issodhos
There are several points to make....
The understanding of Alzhiemers has has progressed considerably since that time
I suspect that none of these doctors was a specialist in degenerative brain disease.... and so not well situated to do that evaluation.
Given that all of thew Doctors would have been close to Reagan, they would likely be defensive about him. And, also in retrospect would be defensive about their own judgments.
And last
[quote]Alzheimer's Disease: Progressing through Three Stages
In people with Alzheimer's disease, changes in the brain may begin 10 to 20 years before any visible signs or symptoms appear. Some regions of the brain may begin to shrink, resulting in memory loss, one of the first signs of Alzheimer's disease.
