What health information presidents are required to disclose
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Former President Biden's cancer diagnosis and new revelations about the White House's efforts to hide his deteriorating health highlight the murky standards for what health information presidents are required to disclose.
The big picture: There is no legal requirement for presidents to divulge their health records or status. There's also no agreed-upon definition of what being "fit for office" means.
State of play: Perceptions of politicians' privacy — and what's out of bounds — have significantly changed over the past century.
- The focus on a president's health and ability to serve became more important with ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967. That addressed presidential succession and instances in which the president can't discharge the duties of the office — but without laying out a medical threshold or saying who precisely should determine fitness for office.
- Since then, there's been tension between presidents' medical privacy and the public's right to know, with privacy giving ground to fuller disclosure, the AMA Journal of Ethics noted in 2000.
Zoom in: U.S. presidents have in the past hidden their impairments.
- Grover Cleveland secretly underwent surgery for oral cancer on a yacht in 1893.
- The public was unaware that Woodrow Wilson suffered a major stroke in 1919 that incapacitated him until the end of his term in 1921.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt submitted to physician exams of his infirmity from polio before the 1932 presidential race, though was seldom photographed in a wheelchair.
- John F. Kennedy took pains to conceal multiple medical conditions such as Addison's disease in order to project youthful vigor.
Zoom out: Access to the health information of presidential candidates was a point of contention, including during the 2024 election.
- Biden, at that point the oldest person to ever serve as president, dropped out of the race in the summer after a disastrous debate performance ignited concerns about his age and physical health.
- Then-candidate Trump agreed to release his medical records but didn't end up doing so — breaking with a longstanding tradition for presidential candidates. Trump has since become the oldest person to take the oath of office.
- Then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in contrast, released detailed health records and called on Trump to do the same as questions about his physical and cognitive health mounted.
Flashback: Democratic presidential candidate Paul Tsongas and his physicians denied he had a recurrence of lymphoma while he campaigned in 1992 until he dropped out.
- In 1972, Democratic vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the ticket after acknowledging he had been hospitalized for depression and underwent electroshock therapy.
Go deeper: Biden camp pushes back against suspicion over cancer diagnosis timing
Axios' Adriel Bettelheim contributed to this report.
