George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

This California professor noted that there exists a literature on hyperthyroid patients who
have developed schizophrenia. Sixty per cent of patients with hyperthyroidism show
intellectual impairment of some degree. What will Bush be like if and when he becomes
euthyroid? The California professor regarded this as a fascinating question to follow.
According to a Venezuelan endocrinologist, hyperthyroidism must be regarded as a
psycho-somatic illness characterized by obsessive states. When the patient is unable to
consummate his or her obsession, then cardiac arrhythmia results. When this happens, the
condition of the patient deteriorates. This mechanism strongly suggests that such thyroid
patients be disqualified for posts that involve stress and weighty responsibilities.
According to this expert, it would be difficult for Bush to remain in office until January,
1993, and it would be madness for him to attempt a second term. This specialist has a
background of research in the psychological causes of thyroid disorders; one form of the
etiology of hyperthyroidism he has studied involves the tendency of young children
whose parents have died to develop thyroid problems as a result of grief and
bereavement.
The question of the influence of Bush's hyperthyroid condition on his decison-making,
especially his rageful and obsessive decisions to go to war in Panama and the Gulf, could
not be avoided even by the pro-regime press. A New York Times article by Dr. Lawrence
K. Altman, MD, posed the question, "does an overactive thyroid gland affect mood and
judgment?" According to this piece, experts interviewed admitted that they had
"wondered about a theoretical link between [Bush's] Graves' disease and his presidential
decisions. Most experts believe that people with hyperthyroidism do not make decisions
as well as they would normally." "An important question," wrote Altman, "is when Mr.
Bush's case of Graves' disease began." One way to shed light on this question would be to
test stored blood samples that Bush's doctors would routinely keep. But the Secret
Service has a policy of destroying all such specimens for security reasons! According to
Dr. Andre Van Herle of UCLA, among patients suffering from hyperthyroidism, "some
are not disturbed at all; others are basket cases." Altman elaborates that
people with hyperthyroid conditions can exhibit uncharacteristic behavior like showing
shortened attention spans, making snap decisions, behaving frenetically, and tiring more
easily than usual. People have been known to inexplicably get married or divorced when
such important decisions are out of character. Students with overactive thyroids may be
so jittery that they cannot sit through class or they do poorly on examinations.
The worst form of hyperthyroidism, known as thyroid storm, can be charctarized by
fever, marked weakness, muscle-wasting and psychosis. Mr. Bush's doctors have
described his case as mild, and never near thyroid storm.
According to Dr. Peter C. Whybrow, head of the department of psychiatry at the
University of Pennsylvania, mild depression can be an initial symptom of hyperthyroid
disorder. People with overactive thyroid glands "don't perform quite so well," in his view.
"They feel, for reasons they cannot explain, a little agitated, a little preoccupied with
themselves, jumpy. Their concentration is a little off." According to Altman, "some