In a Friday guest post on The New Republic’s website, Dr. Steven Beutler surmised that explaining President Donald Trump’s “bizarre, volatile behavior” and concerns “raging among mental health professionals about Trump’s mental state” could be put to rest with his guess that Trump’s been battling a Sexual Transmitted Disease (STD) and specifically syphilis.
Beutler made this determination after a set-up about how Democrats have raised concerns to legislation requiring the White House to hire a psychiatrist to it being considered “unethical” in the mental health world “to speculate publicly about someone whom they have examined”:
Physicians like me have also taken notice of Trump’s bizarre, volatile behavior. Given our experience, we can’t help but wonder if there’s a medical diagnosis to be made. After all, many medical conditions exhibit their first symptoms in the form of psychiatric issues and personality changes. One condition in particular is notable for doing so: Neurosyphilis.
To bolster his claims, Beutler laid out the various symptoms of syphilis and how he arrived at the conclusion of Trump having an advanced form of the STD:
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Syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection, is sometimes referred to as “The Great Imposter” because of its ability to mimic many other conditions. It is commonly broken down into three stages. Primary syphilis is the most widely recognized form of the disease. It is characterized by the development of an ulcer, usually genital, a few weeks to a few months after sexual contact with an infected person.
(....)
A secondary stage of the disease is seen in some patients weeks or months later. These patients may develop a variety of systemic symptoms, such as rash, fever, and swollen glands. If not treated, the infection enters a prolonged latent phase, which can last decades....It is seen 10 to 30 years after the initial infection, and is best known for causing neurologic and neuropsychiatric disease: Neurosyphilis.
The symptoms of neurosyphilis are protean, varying widely from one individual to another. Commonly recognized symptoms include irritability, loss of ability to concentrate, delusional thinking, and grandiosity. Memory, insight, and judgment can become impaired. Insomnia may occur. Visual problems may develop, including the inability of pupils to react to the light. This, along other ocular pathology, can result in photophobia, dimming of vision, and squinting. All of these things have been observed in Trump. Dementia, headaches, gait disturbances. and patchy hair loss can also be seen in later stages of syphilis.
Despite making the arguing that Trump has an STD contributing to his personality both as a candidate and now as President, the infectious diseases doctor asserted that he “cannot, of course, establish this diagnosis from a distance.”
“There’s a great deal of information I don’t have access to, which could be critical in reaching the correct conclusion. In Trump’s case, there are many diagnostic possibilities, and we have very little background information because the slim medical summary he released was vague, unverifiable, and possibly outdated,” he continued.
As for how Trump could have contracted it, Beutler pointed to Trump’s “own statements that he was sexually promiscuous in the 1980s, a period when syphilis cases were rapidly increasing in the U.S.” and his infamous comment about the time period being akin to his “personal Vietnam.”
For a post like this and speculation by congressional Democrats about Trump’s mental capacity, it sure is a departure from the swift condemnation whenever questions were raised about Hillary Clinton.
