Fit to decide?

Abstract

In 1966, a 28-year-old trainee neurologist crossed Westminster Bridge from his research bench at St Thomas Hospital, where he was working alongside David Marsden on the effects of adrenaline on tremor, to enter parliament as an MP. He left medicine 2 years later to become one of the youngest ever British Foreign Secretaries, a founder and leader of the British Social Democratic Party, and an international peace broker. He is David Owen. Throughout his political career, he retained the title ‘Dr’, which seems to have been more than a nostalgic reminder of his original calling, since—in recent years—he has ventured a clinical interpretation of some of his observations on British and foreign political leaders. The result is In sickness and power , in which Lord Owen chronicles the effects of illness on heads of government, documents the complicities of their doctors, formulates statutory mechanisms to deal with sick leaders and proposes a new clinical syndrome, ‘the hubris syndrome’. Much of the medical material has already been published. But Owen has gleaned some new information about JF Kennedy's treatment from notes held by the Presidential Library, and on the health of Anthony Eden from still-closed records at the Birmingham University Special Collections Archives. Interviews with the key doctors involved provide original data on the illnesses of President Mitterrand and the Shah of Iran. These individuals are Owen's four principal case histories. To assist him, Owen assembled an informal medical advisory team, including his son, Gareth, a psychiatrist. Despite this, some errors have crept in: considering Dr Owen's neurological training, the reference to levodopa as an anti-cholinergic drug is surprising (p. 35). Owen's history of illness in 20th-century leaders leaves no doubt that the clinical care of our heads of government may be secretive, chaotic and suboptimal. For instance, Anthony Eden ignored …