'Not everything is a conspiracy theory!' Doctor smacks down CNN host
Medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner pushed back on CNN's Pamela Brown as she voiced skepticism that former President Joe Biden only learned about his prostate cancer diagnosis recently, as he likely had it for years, or that the medical guidelines did not indicate more rigorous testing earlier.
"He was president of the United States," said Brown. "And I understand that Dr. Conley was following the guidelines, but I mean, do you follow — do you just stick to the book on the guidelines when you're dealing with someone who's running the country, who was then running for re-election?"
"You practice the best," said Reiner. "Look, as a physician, for anybody, and particularly as a physician for a public figure, your first requirement, your first responsibility, is to do what's right for the patient and to treat them like a patient. Don't do testing simply because somebody else expects you to do testing. Don't, you know, provide a therapy because you think it might look good for the public. Do what you think is right for the patient. And again, PSA testing is not routinely used in older men because it doesn't — it doesn't change the outcome for them."
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"So you know, I hear what people think," he added. "But he wasn't tested because it wasn't indicated. And he wasn't tested apparently because, you know, until recently, the patient didn't have symptoms that would warrant testing. So I get it. But this is where we are. I mean, not everything is a conspiracy."
"No, and I understand your point there for certain," said Brown. "But now this information is coming out and there's a big question of when this started, right? We know it's an aggressive form that it spread to his bone. And so you just wait until someone who's like the president of the United States shows symptoms until you test them in a situation like this?"
"In older men, yeah ... this is the specific recommendation for this particular disease," said Reiner. "But one other point I do want to make ... I think this is really illustrative of what can happen when we elect very old people to office. When you're 80 years old, stuff happens. And it doesn't matter how you look one day, but 80-year-olds get heart attacks, and they get strokes, and they get prostate cancer. And it happens more frequently the older we get."
This, he added, is the reason "I've always felt super strongly about, when we're vetting candidates running for office, we should expect, as the voting public, the people who are putting these people in office, we should expect complete transparency. We should expect that the medications listed on these disclosures are the complete list, right? Not the partial list."
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