Category: Professional Regulation

By Brad Segal

“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” proclaimed Dr. Harold Bornstein. The gastroenterologist’s letter, released on the candidate’s website nine months ago, stumbles from the outset with a typo (“To Whom My Concern,”), then steamrolls over the most basic descriptions of health (medical school teaches us that vital signs are, well, vital), omits information pertinent to the public discourse (why does it fail to mention the medical reason exempting Trump from the Vietnam draft?), and strangely emphases non-medicalized traits (“His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary”). Most experts agree that this medical record, if we can even call it that, is at best hyperbole. It draws grandiose conclusions without medical justification. Even Dr. Bornstein conceded, “In the rush, I think some of those words didn’t come out exactly the way they were meant.”

Just this morning the Trump campaign released a second letter from Dr. Bornstein. But this time the doctor rather humbly concludes, “In summary, Mr. Trump is in excellent physical health.”  These letters from Dr. Bornstein’s letter demonstrate a modern-day moral dilemma in providing care for a party nominee. At conflict is the physician’s professional duty to respect patient confidentiality, and his or her obligations to care for society more broadly.

First, patient-doctor confidentiality is not merely a byproduct of the law—it is a moral obligation grounded in the core tenants of the medical profession. To put it simply, if a patient comes to expect that his doctor will tell the entire community about the patient’s most embarrassing bodily defects, the patient may understandably deny his worsening symptoms of poor health at the next office visit. In the long run, erosion of trust in the medical system could endanger the public’s health–everyone is thus better off when doctors uniformly respect patient privacy. It is important to point out, however, that an informed and competent person can voluntarily waive one’s right to patient-doctor confidentiality, such as when a patient gives a physician the permission to provide updates to family members. Or when then-candidate John McCain instructed his physicians all 1,100 pages in his medical records.

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