'From My Reading of the Medical Records, McCain Is In Excellent Health'

So says a practicing physician, not some non-practicing doctor for the New York Times, which continues to print false stories questioning John McCain's health.

And they're not the only media outlet constantly rehashing old news.

John McCain has never had a metastatic melanoma, no matter how often The New York Times' Larry Altman tries to insinuate that he has.

In May, I joined 19 other medical journalists (including two other MDs) to review 1,000-plus pages of McCain's medical records. Altman, a non-practicing physician, wasn't invited and has never seen the entire record. But representatives of many major media outlets did.

Yet the Times just ran Altman's Page One piece asserting that the release "leaves questions, even confusion, about his cancer. . . A critical question concerns inconsistencies in medical opinions about the severity of his melanoma." Not true.

The surgery to the left side of McCain's face back in 2000 was extensive, removing the melanoma and reconstructing his face. But the records resolved all questions. I was able to look through the pages easily in the three hours allotted, as most records were administrative notes, with little bearing on his actual care.

The pre-surgery skin biopsies of McCain's left temple speculated that the melanoma could have spread. But such biopsies are preliminary. The extensive and definitive, post-op reports showed clearly that it was an isolated melanoma, large but curable. All 33 lymph nodes, including the most predictive "sentinel" node, came back cancer free.

So why does the Times persist in promoting falsehoods, other than the fact they're in the tank for Obama? Siegel speculates:

From my reading of the medical records, McCain is in excellent health. The only confusion about his melanoma is in Altman's mind, and the only question is why a veteran journalist would resort to blind speculation. To me, he seems angry - but I'll leave that one to political analysts and psychologists.

To be fair, Altman notes the health history of the other candidates, but seems to have a fixation on McCain. We rarely see any stories on Barack Obama health history and little is known about it. Nor do we see endless front page stories on the health of Joe Biden, who has had an aneurysm in the past. Considering the idiotic statements coming from Biden, perhaps we should question his mental health.