Malignant melanoma killed FDR! That is the working theory powering a book out this year entitled “FDR’s Deadly Secret” (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), by Dr. Steven Lomazow and Eric Fettmann.
His heavy drinking was legion. Only British Prime Minister Winston Churchill seemed able to drink him under the table. And it would take more than the laps he swam in the White House pool and at his “Little White House” retreat in Warm Springs, Ga., to make up for how sedentary his life became after he was diagnosed with polio.
And let’s not even talk about his diet, which was a recipe for cerebrovascular disease. But, according to the authors, his weight loss and generally increasingly frail appearance in the final months of his life was not because of a combination of the stress induced by years of world war and poor lifestyle choices. Rather, if one accepts the book’s premises, FDR’s rapid decline was due to the metastasis of a melanoma from over his left eye brow to his brain and bowel.
The putative melanoma first appeared in photos in the 1920s, grew in size throughout the 1930s, and disappeared from view in 1940, by which time it was large enough to not look out of place over Aaron Neville’s eyebrow.
What’s the basis for this call to rewrite medical history? It’s not FDR’s medical records, which disappeared decades ago. And his personal physician never spoke of his patient’s rapid decline. Dr. Lomazow, a neurologist, and Mr. Fettmann, an editor at the New York Post, based their diagnosis on diary notes of people who worked in the White House.
Whatever the truth may be, never has this blog—“The Mole” —been more aptly named.
Sally Kubetin
Senior Editor
Photo courtesy Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency