http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2009/05/sweet_justice.html
MAY 29 2009
Sonia Sotomayor, the 54-year-old federal judge currently serving on the 2nd Circuit, is poised to become the nation’s first Latina on the Supreme Court—and also the first justice with Type 1 diabetes. Her medical condition has sparked a debate over her suitability to serve on the high court. While Sotomayor’s diabetes is unlikely to affect her work in the near future, the potential for a catastrophic complication—by no means unique to her situation—highlights a serious deficiency in the nation’s oversight of Supreme Court justices.
The 50-year Harvard-based Medalist study also concluded that patients like Sotomayor “live without severe complications for an extreme duration of the disease.” As a result, Sotomayor’s health prospects are unlikely to be more concerning, for example, than those of Chief Justice John Roberts (who suffered a generalized seizure recently), Ruth Bader Ginsberg (who has battled two cancers), or Clarence Thomas (who is overweight). But, of course, there are no guarantees she’ll stay healthy. Though improbable, she (or another justice) could have a stroke, heart attack, or damage to blood vessels to the eyes, causing blindness.
in 1974, when Justice William O. Douglas had a stroke. In a 2000 article titled “Mental Decrepitude on the U.S. Supreme Court,” David Garrow reviewed 15 similar cases of justices who continued to serve on the high court while demented, addicted to drugs, or otherwise mentally incapacitated. Most recently, in 2004 Susan Okie argued in the New England Journal of Medicine that then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist was less-than-forthcoming about his deadly thyroid cancer, which may have compromised his judicial abilities.
The fundamental problem is that the Supreme Court is entirely self-governing, unlike any other governmental body. The president is subject to the 25th Amendment, which provides a clear procedure to remove him from office should he become unable to “discharge the powers and duties” assigned. Since 1980, federal judges must answer to complaints charging them with being too ill to make decisions—but the Supreme Court is immune from that law.
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Ginsburg Has Surgery for Pancreatic Cancer
By ADAM LIPTAKFEB. 5, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/washington/06ginsburg.html
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York on Thursday for what was apparently early-stage pancreatic cancer, according to a statement released by the Supreme Court.
The surgery followed the discovery of a lesion during an annual checkup in late January at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. A scan revealed a small tumor, approximately one centimeter across, in the center of the pancreas, the court’s statement said.
Justice Ginsburg was treated for colon cancer in 1999.
According to the American Cancer Society, pancreatic cancer has one of the lowest five-year survival rates, at about 5 percent over all for all stages.
I everybody aware that Neil Gorsuch is living in Boulder Colorado, aka, The Republic of Boulder? Hope this isn’t a red flag.
Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg Gets Heart Stent
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20141126/ginsburg-heart-stent
Pancreatic cancer ? No two ways about it, that’s a game ender.
Toast
Thanks for the article. And it was written in 2009. Very interesting.