Highlights
eight key problems indicating the letter was faked
By Samuel Warde
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| Dr. Harold N. Bornstein (Twitter.com) from The Raw Story |
Dr. Gunter begins her piece, writing that: “Donald Trump is
talking about Hillary Clinton’s health as are two doctors who have never evaluated Clinton.
They have
apparently diagnosed her with all kinds of ailments using the long disproven
Fox-Drudge equation.”
 |
| When Trump released this letter on Twitter last December, he thanked Dr. Jacob Borenstein for writing it. The problem is Dr. Jacob Borenstein died at age 93 in 2010, five years before heallegedly wrote this letter. |
“This
attention on Clinton has renewed some interest in the letter Donald Trump
released last year from his personal physician,” she continued.
Dr.
Gunter then explains that while “many outlets” have picked the letter apart,
she wants “to tell you as a doctor exactly how bad it is.”
I
would never write anything this terrible for a Jury Duty excuse or a back to
work note, never mind something that half the country (and possibly half the
world) might see or could possibly end up one day in a Presidential Library!
Writing
that “there are so many issues with the letter,” Dr. Gunter details 8 key
issues she finds with the letter.
“1. The header has a non-working web address and doctors don’t include e-mail addresses in letters.”
“2. Lenox Hill has a Division of Gastroenterology not a Section and Dr. Bornstein isn’t listed on the website as a member.”
“Dr. Bornstein is affiliated with Lenox Hill, but he is not part of their Division of Gastroenterology. There also isn’t a Department of Medicine there is a Division of General Internal Medicine and Dr. Bornstein isn’t a member of that either,” Dr. Gunter writes, adding that: “It is also very odd for a doctor in a private practice to use their admitting privileges address under their signature if it is not the same as their practice address.”
“3. The letter starts with a
typo.”
“To Whom My Concern.” As Dr. Gunter writes, we are all guilty of typos but if one was writing a letter of this import – it is not that difficult to have it checked for errors.
“4. No doctor describes tests as ‘only
positive results’ or ‘astonishingly excellent.'”
 |
| This reads like something Trump would write himself |
Dr.
Gunter elaborates, writing “’Only positive results’; is gibberish. Some tests
are good if they are positive and some are bad if they are positive. […] And
while we’re at it doctors just don’t say “laboratory test results” that sounds
like something on a soap opera.
“5. Doctors don’t say “’test score’ we
just give the results.”
And
as Dr. Gunter points out: “A test score is something that happens at the DMV.”
“6. How did Dr. Bornstein test Donald
Trump’s strength and stamina?”
“Did
he have him bench press in the office? Do a treadmill test?” Dr. Gunter asks,
adding that “Doctors just don’t typically write vague, quasi-medical things in
letters. I’ve also never heard of a stamina test. An internist might test muscle strength as part of a physical
exam, but the results are graded 0-5 and 5 is not secret code for extraordinary
it’s code for normal.”
“7. The
healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Noting
that “Every news site has pointed out how ridiculous this is,” Dr. Gunter
explains that “Dr. Bornstein is not a medical historian who runs a Presidential
health archives and obviously Washington and Lincoln never had their PSA
checked for comparison. The first blood pressure cuff was invented in 1881, so
yeah.”
8. There is no useful health
information.
As
Dr. Gunter explains: “Someone with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s could have a
normal blood pressure, normal PSA, take 81 mg aspirin and be on a “low dose”
(we don’t know the exact dose or type) statin. So could someone with diabetes
or someone who had a heart stent placed last year or who had a stroke four
years ago.”
Dr.
Gunter goes on to discuss a few anomalies with the letter that don’t concern
her and concludes, writing:
It’s a terrible letter.
Did Dr. Bornstein write it? If so he should be embarrassed. It’s medically illiterate and if he doesn’t know his website doesn’t work or if that he’s not in the Division of Gastroenterology that’s an issue.
Did Trump write it? He’ll never tell. It certainly reads like a letter written by someone with close to no knowledge of Dr. Bornstein’s practice or medicine.
All I can say is typos and weird links and mentions of non-existent sections of gastroenterology and nonsensical medical information aside the letter provides essentially no medical information.
Samuel
Warde is a writer, social
and political activist, and all-around troublemaker.