McCain's Health

Thursday, March 20

Is John McCain too old to become president? If elected, would he survive one or two terms in the White House?

Many Americans might have reservations about voting for a 71 year old candidate who will be pushing 80 if he were to serve a full 8 years.

Do McCain's age or health liabilities pose insurmountable obstacles to his candidacy?

"I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein," John McCain likes to say.

Senator McCain's mother is 94, looks stately and speaks lucidly, suggesting that her son has some genetic potential for longevity.

THE AVERAGE age of US presidents when they take office is 54. Ronald Reagan was in his 70's during most of his 8 year tenure, but entered office younger than McCain is now. Youth is no guarantee of a President's health; John F. Kennedy, elected America's youngest president at 42, was plagued with severe health problems that might have done him in if an assassin's bullet had not.

McCain evinced some degree of psychological and physical resilience by surviving 5 years of imprisonment by the North Vietnamese. Both his arms and one leg were broken when he ejected from his jet fighter-bomber over Hanoi in 1967. He was then beaten and bayoneted by angry civilians, until he was remanded to the Hanoi Hilton for months of solitary confinement, physical abuse and malnutrition.

Has he been left with physical or emotional scars from that experience? During the 1999 presidential primary against George Bush he released extensive medical records showing no significant health problems.

He is reported to have recently hiked the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim with his sons, no mean feat.

Of course, most people are aware of his brush with deadly melanoma in 2000. On a scale of 1 (best, localized and superficial) to 4 (worst, confirmed spread to other organs), his melanoma was staged at 2: it was about a half inch across, and had just penetrated the surface layer of the skin, which could have meant trouble.

At the time of surgery, dye was injected into the tumor where it circulated to a "sentinel node", the nearest lymph node which was the likely site of cancer spread. During the operation, that lymph node was carefully examined by a pathologist and pronounced cancer-free, but the surgeons took the precaution of doing a wider excision, and took out additional lymph nodes from the left side of McCain's face.

The lymph nodes were found to be cancer-free, but the extensive surgery left McCain with the scar and asymmetrical facial features that are now his hallmark.

Does this mean that McCain has no chance of recurrence? Eight out of 10 people (80%) diagnosed with stage 2 melanoma will be alive 5 years later. But it is now 8 years later, and with each passing year, the likelihood of melanoma coming back diminishes.

Still, there is always the remote possibility that a few errant cancer cells escaped the 2000 surgery and continue to lurk in McCain's body. Rarely, cancers like McCain's recur decades after initial surgery, and when melanoma metastasizes, the prognosis is usually grim.

What about McCain's age? The average life expectancy for an American male is 71 years, precisely McCain's age. Does this mean that McCain's warranty is about to expire?

But longevity statistics are deceptive. Seventy-one is the average age a new-born male infant can look forward to if born in 2008. If he surmounts the dangers of childhood and adolescence and survives to 25, his life expectancy would become 73; at my age of 55, the average life expectancy for a male is 77.

What about for 71 year-old John McCain? It appears that by having "dodged the bullet" of diseases like heart disease and cancer that fell many men in middle age, there's a big jump in life expectancy: the tables say that McCain should live to 83! That's well past the two terms that McCain needs to survive if elected.

For women, the news is even better. A 71 year-old woman has a life expectancy of 86!

Does this mean that an 86 year-old woman is poised on the brink of annihilation? Well, the proverbial goal posts keep getting pushed back, and she can expect to survive, on average, to 94!

One fly in the ointment is that McCain has been uncharacteristically cagey about releasing his most recent health records. He did so, with great candor, during his last presidential run. But he promises to do so again, fully and completely, some time next month.

We'll see then if he has any as yet unacknowledged health liabilities.