Dr Henry Marsh
Neurosurgeon and author of books including Do No Harm
As I near 80, I am painfully aware of my own deteriorating energy and abilities. I doubt if Donald Trump is any different – despite this weekend’s extraordinary birthday cage fight at the White House, for which he stayed up till the early hours.
Is he too old to be in office? As we enter old age many of us acquire irrefutable evidence on brain scans – as I have done, to my distress – that inside our heads our brains are scarred and shrinking, however tanned our skin and blonde our hair on the outside.
So it is tempting to medicalise Trump – to attribute his grotesque behaviour to narcissistic personality disorder or more recently to the early stages of fronto-temporal dementia. Both these conditions involve delusions of grandeur but Trump has, ironically, achieved grandeur by becoming US President, so in this respect at least they no longer apply.
