Neurosurgeon and CNN commentator Dr. Sanjay Gupta said there was a “unanimous” indication from fellow medical professionals that President Joe Biden should be given a cognitive test following his poor debate performance last month.
Gupta called for Biden to take a cognitive test in order to calm fears about his mental acuity. The president’s lackluster debate performance has led several Democrats and political pundits to call for him to step down as the Democratic nominee ahead of the November general election.
“There was concern from the go, frankly,” Gupta said on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper when asked about Biden’s debate performance.
“There was cause for concern, you know, stumbling of speech, confused rambling at times, and then also motor symptoms,” Gupta continued.
He clarified that aspects of Biden’s behavior onstage taken by themselves were not a sign of cognitive decline but that, taken together, they were worrying.
“None of those things are diagnostic of anything — I just want to be clear about that — but in aggregate, they are flags,” Gupta said. “Unanimously, from the medical professionals I’ve heard — they would advocate for testing based on what I saw at that debate.”
Last week, Gupta authored an op-ed in which he described conversations with other medical professionals and doctors about Biden’s performance and called for “detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing.”
“For me as a brain specialist, it was concerning to watch President Joe Biden, and it quickly became clear that I was not alone in my reaction. Over the past week, I received more than a dozen calls, texts, and emails from medical colleagues who, like me, specialize in the brain. It wasn’t that what we noticed was necessarily new but that it was particularly pronounced, and right from the start of the debate,” Gupta wrote.
He wrote then, too, that while these observations about the president’s performance on the debate stage may not signify any diagnosis, they were concerning.
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“The consensus from the doctors reaching out to me, however, was that the president should be encouraged to undergo detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing, and those results should be made available to the public,” Gupta wrote.
“With an election looming in November, we don’t have answers about Biden,” Gupta wrote, adding, “The country is watching now, and that assessment gives cause for concern — and a need for transparent testing.”
