As much as I'd like to believe this story, there's an awfully long chain of hearsay here.  Did the doctor speak directly to the lab techs? Are any of them willing to go on the record (HIPAA be damned, in the lab technicians' case)?  Sometimes, a rumor is just a rumor.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/A...

That's a link to the original story about the pretzel.  A blood sugar analysis was done -- so there was a blood test.  And the story about falling off a couch seems a bit far fetched.

We'll see what the blowback is and how Lord Owen (who is a major figure in the UK)responds.

And why send blood to Hopkins?  Perhaps because Hopkins has a department specializing in swallowing disorders?

Again, who knows.

Good question, seeing as the President gets his medical care at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Two possibilities come to mind:

1) Bethesda sends its blood work to Hopkins;
2) The whole story is bogus.

Not the part about Bush drinking again - I think there's at least some evidence of that happening elsewhere - but that lab techs would blab to doctors who would blab to a visiting doctor who would blab to Lord Owen.  That's a lot of blabbing about facts which would be easy to trace to their source.  Does anyone honestly believe that just any old lab tech handles the President's blood analysis?  No, it would be the supervisor or the best tech in the lab.  So everyone would know who the tech was who was doing the blabbing if there was any blabbing going on.  However, and this is a big however, every medical professional and tech has the HIPAA regs drilled into him/her all the time.  HIPAA is so strangulating that it's hard for anyone who is not the patient to get the information even if that person is entitled to the information.  As a court appointed guardian for children I've had trouble obtaining information, to which I am entitled, due to the overly stringent reliance of lab techs and doctors on HIPAA rules.  I've seen social workers refuse to tell the parents of minor children what the children's blood tests revealed.  I've seen members of Community Services Boards refuse to show parents of mentally ill children the petitions forming the basis for an involuntary commitment hearing.  So I'm just finding it hard to believe that the kind of medical professionals who work at Hopkins (and really, why Hopkins?  What's wrong with Bethesda?) would openly discuss the President's lab test results.  

We've all read stories about celebrities' medical problems getting reported to the press.  http://wcbstv.com/local/george...

PALISADES, N.J. (CBS) ?

Just weeks after George Clooney was injured in a motorcycle accident and taken to Palisades Medical Center, CBS 2 HD has exclusively learned that dozens of employees, including doctors and nurses, have been suspended for accessing Clooney's confidential information.

The 46-year-old actor suffered a broken rib and road rash while a companion riding with him suffered a broken foot in the collision with another vehicle.

Within minutes, the media seemed to know everything about Clooney's condition, and sources tell CBS 2 HD that hospital officials are now investigating whether or not their own employees leaked information about Clooney to the media.

CBS 2 HD has learned as many as 40 employees are being investigated, and the hospital has suspended 27 employees for a month without pay after being accused of accessing Clooney's medical records and giving that information to the press -- which is a violation of federal law.

Ordinary people go ga ga and can't keep secrets.

Again, this is all speculation until we read what Lord Owen has to say (because he'll likely be grilled on this).

I'm neutral on this whole thing, but I would not be surprised if it was true, that's all.  

and it involves a celebrity, not the President of the United States.  The mentality about celebrities is that they're somehow fair game, which is why people think it's permissible to stalk them with cameras at the ready every time they leave their homes.  What about the Secret Service?  Would they be involved in transporting or securing a blood test from Bush?  

As I've said for the thousandth time.

http://www.springerlink.com/co...

Hopkins has a specialty department, and a special database.

But who knows?  It could be bogus, but the Lord Owen was a former Labour Foreign Secretary and maybe someone told him because of his position.

I'm not taking a position, but recall that in the last few years there have been some pictures of Bush where he looked tipsy, and a few instances of slurring words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
[someone added a sound effect of a burp and lots of comic bits at the end but I think the front clips are genuine]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

There are doctored videos of Bush appearing to be drunk, as a joke, but I don't think the above ones are -- I recall seeing these when they came out.

Do you really believe the pretzel story?  I don't.  In fact I don't believe anything he says or anything that comes out of his office.

I'll be interested to see if there is anything to this rumor.  

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/...

Bush just gave an interview talking about how he quit drinking.  Did he know the Vanity Fair editorial comment was coming out?  Doesn't that seem like a strange coincidence?

Anyway, I know nothing more and shall see what comes out in time.

So, without having read anything beyond the VF blurb, there is now another reason to think a medical person might have talked to Owen.  http://notesandcomments.com/id...

Again, I know nothing.

Only one third of alcoholics who get into AA recover. Bush has never been in ANY program for alcholics. I think it is quite likely he is falling off the wagon regularly. I mean falling off the chair or whatever.

Lord Owen has written extensively about national leaders and medical conditions.  I recommend for history buffs his assessments of the serious medical conditions of major leaders in the 20th century, published in the Oxford International Journal of Medicine.
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.or...

He discusses Churchill, Kennedy, Reagan, Anthony Eden, to name a few.

This is part of what he says about Kennedy:

We are now discovering that the real scandal about President Kennedy's health does not relate to his Addison's disease but the concern of his own doctor, Janet Travell, about his treatment with amphetamines by Dr Max Jacobson. Jacobson was later found guilty by the New York State Board of Regents' Review Committee on Discipline on 48 accounts of unprofessional conduct.14 Secret Service files and the White House gate log substantiate that Jacobson visited Kennedy as President no fewer than 34 times through to May 1962. As a doctor, Jacobson was well known to use as much as 30-50 mg of amphetamine on his patients, and often to give larger doses. He would commonly supply his patients with injectable vials to be self-administered and though amphetamines were more liberally used at this time, he supplemented them with heavy doses of steroids, garnished with vitamins, and even added ground-up bone marrow, placenta, electric eels and whatever other solubilized particles he perceived to be beneficial.15 We know that the FBI uncovered five vials Jacobson had left at the White House that on analysis revealed high concentrations of amphetamine and steroids. Robert Kennedy, worried about Jacobson's relationship with his brother, had the FDA analyse 15 separate vials, and these coincided with what the state board later disclosed.

Rebecca: The humor in your comments is always like a ray of sunshine -- "falling off the wagon -- the chair"   :)  

Imagine sitting on your sofa and fainting.  Unless it is one of those Victorian ones with a hard and narrow bench, how does one fall forward into a table?

Anyway, we'll see what the reaction is once the book actually comes out.  The book is "The Hubris Syndrome:
Bush, Blair and the Intoxication of Power."

From the publisher:

"David Owen suggests George Bush and Tony Blair developed a Hubristic Syndrome while in power. He provides a powerful analysis, looking at their behaviour, beliefs and governing style, in particular the nature of their hubristic incompetence in handling the Iraq War. Both of them, and in her last year in office, Margaret Thatcher, developed many of the tell-tale and defining symptoms."

Has been circulated for a number of years....

http://counterpunch.org/wormer...