The Daily Background
| Just how healthy is McCain?
by Arlen Parsa
The New York Times will break new ground on the health of the presidential candidates and their running mates in a major expose set to be published in Monday’s print edition.
Lawrence Altman — the veteran Times reporter, George Polk Award winner, and one of the few medical doctors working as a full-time journalist — has spent weeks working with the campaigns and medical professionals on the piece, sources say.
Much of the speculation centers on new questions about the status of John McCain’s cancer raised by the story. The Washington Post reported last week that a growing number of doctors believe that McCain’s melanoma is “more advanced than his physicians concluded and that the chance of recurrence is consequently higher.”
But another peculiar facet of the Times story involves the McCain campaign’s refusal, as of this weekend, to turn over Sarah Palin’s medical information.
There’s nothing like a big McCain-health-status story to thrust even more spotlight on Sarah Palin’s inexperience and ineptitude.
