JFK’s Secret Disease
As I watched President Gerald Ford’s funeral on January 2, 2007, I remembered the brief interaction I had with him when he was a Republican Representative from Michigan before he was Vice President and later assumed the Presidency in the wake of Richard Nixon’s resignation during the Watergate scandal. It was merely an exchange of letters about the JFK autopsy, but one that validates history’s judgment that Mr. Ford was a decent man with an uncommon common touch.
By pure happenstance, I was connected to both ends of the assassination. When Kennedy was killed in 1963 I happened to be Medical Officer of the Day in the Pentagon and was assigned the medical detail to go to the White House, the Capitol and Arlington National Cemetery in case Charles DeGaulle, Prince Phillip or some other luminary fell out during the ceremonies. And because Parkland was the teaching hospital for UT Southwestern Medical School, I’d spent a lot of time roaming the halls there during my medical school years (1958-1962). I knew many of the staff who treated Kennedy when he was rushed to Parkland after the shots rang out in Dealy Plaza.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, President Johnson appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to chair a group (The Warren Commission) of senior officials to investigate. Conspiracy theories abounded. There was a second gunman; the Russians did it; no, it was Fidel Castro; Kennedy was alive and prisoner. And on and on.
Mr. Ford, a Representative from Michigan, was the senior Republican on the Commission. Their 1964 report concluded Oswald acted alone, which spurred even more suspicions. No detail was too small to challenge. The autopsy findings drew special interest. Did the bullets come from the front or rear? How many shots were fired? Did one of the bullets miss? What about the notorious “pristine bullet?”
By 1966 I was out of the Army and back at Parkland in the first year of a four-year pathology residency, which entailed doing a lot of autopsies. I was curious about the Kennedy autopsy. I bought a copy of the official Warren Commission report. The autopsy findings described the wounds, brain, heart, and lungs in standard fashion, but the description of the abdomen merely said, “the abdominal organs are in their normal positions and relationships and there is no increase in free peritoneal fluid. The vermiform appendix and surgically absent and there are a few adhesions joining the region of the cecum to the ventral abdominal wall at the above described old abdominal incision scar.” There are a dozen named organs in the abdomen (kidneys, liver, adrenals and so on) but only one, the appendix, was mentioned by name.
If I’d turned in such an autopsy report I’d have been out on Harry Hines Boulevard looking for another place to study pathology. This was deliberate omission. Some conspiracy theories are true. Somebody was hiding something.
While still in the Army I had heard stories from friends back at Parkland Hospital. The most interesting concerned Jim Carrico, a first year surgery resident at the time of the assassination and later Chairman of the Department of Surgery at UT Southwestern. Jim was the first physician to see Kennedy at Parkland and was at his side until he was pronounced dead. The story I heard from more than one reliable source was that the White House physician immediately thrust into Jim’s hand a pre-prepared syringe of injectable hydrocortisone, a steroid commonly part of emergency kits, but to have it in a syringe ready for injection was noteworthy. The conditions requiring such are few, mainly failure of the adrenal glands, colloquially known as Addison’s disease, which is uniformly fatal without regular administration of hydrocortisone. Addison’s disease neatly and economically explained the cortisone and the incomplete abdominal description in the Warren Commission autopsy report.
Addison’s disease and cortisone therapy was easy to suspect, particularly because I’d frequently photographed Kennedy at close range. I had seen him at a distance of no more than fifteen yards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Veteran’s Day, November 11, 1963, less than two weeks before he was killed. He looked fit, relaxed, and tan; too tan, on later reflection—it is a characteristic of Addison’s disease for patients to have abnormally dark skin and Kennedy’s tan had a somewhat bronze look without the ruddiness that comes with sun exposure. Furthermore, and equally telling, Kennedy had the rounded face (“moon facies” in medispeak) that characterizes long-term cortisone treatment.
I outlined my theory in letters I wrote to every member of the Warren Commission plus Ted, Bobby, and Jackie Kennedy, making the case that if JFK had Addison’s disease it should be made known to the public—it was a disservice to the nation and to anyone else with a serious, lifelong illness, such as diabetes or Addison’s disease, for the public not to know that someone so afflicted could ably serve.
From the Kennedy’s, I got glossy black and white photographs with public relations form-letters. From the Warren Commission I heard only from Gerald Ford, who wrote me a kindly personal letter. Regrettably, I no longer can find it, but I recall it well. It was signed in his distinctive hand, which I came to recognize after he became President, and was typed on fine official congressional stationery. It briefly and pointedly addressed my concerns in a way that made it clear this was no pro-forma response. I cannot recall the exact wording, but the essence of the message was that the records were to be sealed for fifty years and that all of the information that could be released now had been included in the public version. It was clear that there was other information not to be made public for a long time.
It is now widely acknowledged that Kennedy had Addison’s disease. The autopsy pathologists and others present at the autopsy confirmed so in the 1990s. Among the most important supporting documents are the medical records from his back surgery in the 1950s, which discusses the threat that Addison’s poses for any person having a spinal fusion. Kennedy was hospitalized under a pseudonym and is now thought to be the first person with Addison’s disease to survive major surgery.
During JFK’s presidential campaign of 1960 against Richard Nixon, Bobby Kennedy was pointedly asked if JFK had Addison’s disease. He denied it by relying on the original and very narrow definition of Addison’s disease, adrenal failure due to adrenal tuberculosis—the original report to the South London Medical Society by Dr. Addison in 1849 described a group of patients with adrenal failure due to tuberculosis of the adrenal glands. Bobby’s denial rested on the assumption that his adrenal failure was not due to tuberculosis, a safe assumption nowadays when most Addison’s disease is due to other factors. It is not recorded if anyone asked if Kennedy if he had “adrenal failure.” It would have required an outright lie to deny the question in that form.
Visual evidence of Kennedy’s adrenal failure and cortisone treatment. The right photo reveals the round face characteristic of long term cortisone treatment. Also note his bronze “tan” due to skin hyperpigmentation from adrenal failure.
Timeline of JFK illnesses
1855 Thomas Addison “On the Constitutional and Local Effects of Disease of the Suprarenal Capsules.” Six cases, all due to tuberculosis.
1917 JFK born
1920 Near fatal scarlet fever; hospitalized 2 months
1930 Out of school 3 months, weight loss, fainting, weak
1931 Abdominal pain. Appendectomy did not help.
1932 Abdominal and joint pains, weak, weight loss. Bad year at school.
1933 Hospitalized for weight loss, multiple complaints
1934 Hospitalized 2 weeks Mayo Clinic: “colitis, intestinal bleeding”
1936 Hospitalized 2 months in Boston for “colitis and ulcers”
1937 May have begun steroid Rx
1938-39 Multiple visits to Mayo Clinic
1944 Hospitalized 10 days for severe back pain; spinal surgery, osteoporosis. Commanding officer says “Jack doesn’t feign illness. He feigns being well.”
1947 Atlantic crossing Queen Mary. Severe illness. Last rites. Diagnosed with Addison’s disease
1951 Spinal osteoporosis, collapse fractures of vertebrae
1955 Spinal surgery (x2). Post-op urinary infection, coma, last rites again. Unable to dress himself.
1955-57 Hospitalized 9 times for 45 days.
1960 Robert Kennedy says JFK ”…does not now nor has he ever had an ailment described classically as Addison’s disease.”
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; extra doses of steroids and salt
1963 Autopsy
1992 Autopsy pathologists and others present at the autopsy confirm JFK’s adrenalswere completely destroyed.
Postscript:
I witnessed the autopsy of Jack Ruby, who died at Parkland in 1967. The cause of death was an uncommon variety of lung cancer.
I performed the autopsy on Oswald’s “landlady.” Actually she was his housekeeper.
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