According to official visitor logs, a Parkinson’s disease expert from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center visited the White House eight times in eight months from last summer to this spring, including at least once for a meeting with President Biden’s physician.
The expert, Dr. Kevin Cannard, is a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders and recently published an article about Parkinson’s. The logs, released by the White House in response to a request from The New York Times, document visits from July 2023 to March of this year. More recent visits, if any, would not be released until later, under the White House’s voluntary disclosure policy.
It was unclear whether Dr. Cannard was at the White House to specifically consult with the president or whether he was there as part of unrelated meetings with the White House medical team. Dr. Cannard's LinkedIn page describes him as having “supported the White House Medical Unit” for more than 12 years, which would include the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump.
Records from the Obama administration, when Mr. Biden was vice president, show that Dr. Cannard made 10 visits in 2012, plus one family visit; four visits in 2013 and one in 2014. Records from 2015 and 2016 were not immediately available online. Mr. Trump revoked the policy of voluntary disclosure of Mr. Obama’s White House visits, so records from his four years in office are not available.
Dr. Cannard did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The White House did not specifically comment on the purpose of his recent visits. “A wide variety of specialists from the Walter Reed system visit the White House complex to care for the thousands of military personnel who work there,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.
Mr. Bates said the president “has been to a neurologist once a year” as part of his annual general physical and “that exam has found no signs of Parkinson’s and he is not being treated for it.” He declined to provide the dates of any meetings between Mr. Biden and any of his specialists, but said “there have been no neurological visits other than his annual physical, three in total.”
Dr. Cannard met with Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the White House physician, and Dr. John Atwood, a cardiologist at Walter Reed, on Jan. 17, and with another person in the early afternoon at the White House residence clinic, records show. That meeting came a month before Mr. Biden was scheduled to have his final annual medical checkup at Walter Reed on Feb. 28.
In a six-page letter released after that checkup, Dr. O'Connor said the president's medical team had conducted “an extremely detailed neurological exam” that had not yielded “any findings that would be consistent with” Parkinson's, stroke or other central neurological disorders. Dr. O'Connor did not say whether the exam included common tests to assess cognitive decline or detect signs of dementia that are often recommended for older adults.
The White House has said in recent days that there is no reason to conduct additional tests since February. Questions about Mr. Biden’s health, and particularly his Parkinson’s, have proliferated since his disastrous debate performance against Mr. Trump on June 27. In interviews with ABC News on Friday and MSNBC on Monday, Mr. Biden said he has been undergoing the equivalent of a neurological exam every day because of the pressure of presidential duties.
Visitor logs, which have also been reported by other news organizations, including The New York Post and The Guardian, indicate that Dr. Cannard’s first recorded visit to the White House during the Biden administration was November 15, 2022. The logs indicate that he was visiting Joshua Simmons, whose title is not listed.
Dr. Cannard’s other eight most recent visits began on July 28, 2023, when he was recorded as meeting with Megan Nasworthy, a White House liaison to Walter Reed. She was recorded as the person visited for seven of those meetings, which consistently occurred early, between 7 and 9 a.m. on Fridays, with the exception of the last meeting, which occurred on Thursday, March 28, the day before Good Friday. The records indicate a 10th visit that appeared to be for a family tour of the White House.
At the time of the first meetings, Dr. Cannard published a research article in the journal Parkinsonism and related disorders on the early stages of Parkinson's.
A series of neurologists who have not personally examined Mr. Biden said they had observed symptoms in his public appearances that were consistent with Parkinson’s or a related disease, such as hypophonic speech, a forward-bending posture, a shuffling gait, a masked face and an irregular speech pattern. But they stressed that a specific diagnosis could not be made without a firsthand examination.
Mr. Bates, the White House spokesman, previously told The Times that Dr. O’Connor had found no reason to reevaluate Mr. Biden for Parkinson’s disease after his February medical exam. Mr. Bates also said the president had shown no signs of Parkinson’s and had never taken Levodopa or other medications for the condition.
In his interview with ABC News on Friday, Mr. Biden declined to accept an independent neurological and cognitive exam. “I take a cognitive test every day,” he said, meaning that the unique challenges of the presidency have tested him daily.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday morning, Mr. Biden insisted again that his confusion and slurred performance during the debate were an aberration due in part to an infection or other minor ailment, and were not a sign of a larger medical problem.
“If there was something wrong that night, it doesn't just come and go that night,” he said. “That's why I went out. I tested myself, I tested myself everywhere I went. I went out and made my case. The night of that debate, I went out. I was out until 2:00 in the morning that night. That night. It drives me crazy, people talking about it.”