TV personality Dr. Drew Pinsky said he was "gravely concerned" about Hillary Clinton’s health in an interview posted Wednesday, pointing to what he called an "exceedingly rare clot" she had sustained from her 2012 concussion and what he criticized as archaic treatments for her medical problems.
Clinton’s health has been the subject of speculation for weeks by Donald Trump supporters and others in conservative media.
Here is a transcript of the full exchange with Dr. Drew.
DR. DREW PINSKY: But the fact is she released her medical records some time ago, and if you listened to my show last week, I just called a friend of mine, Dr. Robert [name unclear], who’s an excellent internist-pulmonologist, and we just dispassionately sat and evaluated the medical record that she had released. And based on the information that she has provided and her doctors have provided, we were gravely concerned not just about her health, but her health care.
INTERVIEWER: Why?
PINSKY: It’s hard for people to understand. Both of us concluded that if we were providing the care that she was receiving, we’d be ashamed to show up in a doctor’s lounge. We’d be laughed out. She’s receiving sort-of 1950-level care by our evaluation. So we took a look at her record, and here are the basic facts. She had two episodes of what’s called Deep-Venous Thrombosis. Common problem. Blood clots in the leg. She also has hypothyroidism, and she’d been treated for hypothyroidism with something called Armour Thyroid, which is very unconventional and something that we used to use back in the ’60s. And both he and I went, "Hmmm, that’s weird." And by the way, wow, Armour Thyroid sometimes has some weird side effects.
Oh well. OK. So she goes on Coumadin. That’s weird, because Coumadin really isn’t even used anymore. Now we use Eliquis or Xarelto, things like this. Certainly the presidential candidate would get one of the newer anti-coagulates. Then she falls, hits her head, and as a complication of that has something called a Transverse Sinus Thrombosis. This is an exceedingly rare clot. I’ve only seen one of these in my career, which is a clot in the collecting system for the cerebral spinal fluid, and it essentially guarantees that somebody has something wrong with their coagulation system. Well, she’s had two clots, a Transverse Sinus Thrombosis.
What’s wrong with her coagulation system? Has that been evaluated? And oh, by the way, Armour Thyroid associated rarely with hyper-coagulability. So the very medicine the doctors are using may be causing this problem, and they’re using an old-fashioned medicine to treat it. What is going on with her health care? It’s bizarre. I got to tell you. Maybe they have reasons, but at a distance, it looks bizarre. There ought to be some sort of standard for people that are going to lead the country or are going to making these important decisions. Again, Hillary may be fine with all of this. I mean, it’s dangerous and it’s concerning, but you can see—and by the way, there were two other things that gravely concerned us. When she hit her head, she had to wear these prism glasses when she came out.
INTERVIEWER: Right, right.
PINSKY: That is brain damage, and it’s affecting her balance. Now clearly, it hasn’t affected her cognition, but tell us a little more about that. That’s profound. And then number two, when they screened her for heart disease, again, they did an old-fashioned screen. It just seems like she’s getting care from somebody that she met in Arkansas when she was a kid, and you’ve got to wonder. You’ve got to wonder. It’s not so much that her health is a grave concern. It’s that the care she’s getting could make it a concern.