NEW YORK TIMES
An expert on Parkinson’s disease from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center visited the White House eight times in eight months from last summer through this spring, including at least once for a meeting with President Biden’s physician, according to official visitor logs.
The expert, Dr. Kevin Cannard, is a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders and recently published a paper on Parkinson’s. The logs, released by the White House in response to a request from The New York Times, document visits from July 2023 through March of this year. More recent visits, if there have been 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 consult specifically about 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 “supporting the White House Medical Unit” for more than 12 years, which would include during the administrations of Presidents Donald J. Trump and Barack Obama.
Dr. Cannard did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The White House did not comment specifically on the purpose of his visits. “A wide variety of specialists from the Walter Reed system visit the White House complex to treat the thousands of military personnel who work on the grounds,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.
Mr. Bates said that the president “has been seen by a neurologist once a year” as part of his overall annual physical checkup and “that examination has found no sign of Parkinson’s and he is not being treated for it.” He declined to provide dates of any meetings between Mr. Biden and any of his specialists but said “there have been no neurologist visits besides the one for his physical per year, three in total.”
Dr. Cannard met on Jan. 17 with Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the White House physician, as well as Dr. John Atwood, a cardiologist at Walter Reed, and another person in the early evening in the White House residence clinic, the logs showed. That meeting came a month before Mr. Biden underwent his most recent annual physical checkup at Walter Reed on Feb. 28.