Celebrities’ Attitudes Key to Success of Their Medical Treatments

Celebrities who become ill fare much better when they’re treated as ordinary patients and don’t think they’re smarter than their doctors, concludes a new book by an American Medical Assn. reporter.

In the book “Extraordinary Care,” AMA reporter Dennis Breo says that Adolf Hitler, Elvis Presley and Howard Hughes were “impossible patients” whose health suffered because of their celebrity status.

But Breo says President Reagan and Pope John Paul II fared much better because they were treated as ordinary people.

Relied on Drugs

The 400-page book consists of interviews with celebrities’ doctors over the last 10 years. In it, Breo discusses the health of Hitler, Presley, Hughes and others. Often, he concludes, celebrities are their own worst enemies.

“In cases like those of Hughes, Presley and Hitler, their celebrity status worked against them medically,” Breo said in an interview. “They were three essentially impossible patients. They had no friends. They put their trust in drugs.

“If they’d have listened to any common physician, they probably would have been better off. Basically, we’re talking about common sense.”

In a 1985 interview with Hitler’s doctor, Breo learned that Hitler refused to undress for a medical examination because he believed that it would demean him. In Hitler’s last days, Dr. Ernst Gunther Schenck told Breo, the Nazi leader suffered from arteriosclerosis, progressive heart disease and other ailments.

“Dr. Schenck told me that he was shocked when he saw Hitler,” Breo said. “He looked like a corpse.” Hitler committed suicide in the waning days of the war.

Presley and Hughes both turned to drugs instead of to their doctors, Breo said. Hughes allowed his teeth to become so rotten that doctors were afraid that he would choke.

Presley’s doctor, George Nichopoulous, made an attempt to wean the singer from drugs, Breo said, but the star obtained prescriptions for 5,300 pills in the seven months before his death.

And the shah of Iran refused to be treated for his leukemia because he felt it would weaken him politically, Breo said.

“His physician, Ben Kean, told me the shah actually got terrible medical care because he could not be treated as an ordinary person. He would not admit until the very end that he actually had leukemia,” Breo said.

Reagan and Pope John Paul II, who survived would-be assassins’ bullets, were given standard medical treatment by doctors in emergency rooms, the author said.

Status in the Way

“Celebrity status can get in the way,” Breo concluded. “Reagan and the Pope make the case for normal, ordinary medical treatment.”

Breo, 44, is a reporter for the AMA’s weekly American Medical News. He worked hard to get interviews for his book, waiting as long as three years to talk to Hughes’ doctor.

The interviews were granted, he said, because the doctors felt they were talking to a professional colleague. “Doctors aren’t used to dealing with the media,” he said.

His book also discusses medical controversies like the dispute over whether Laetrile should be used to fight cancer, and the transplant of a baboon’s heart into Baby Fae. The infant later died, and the procedure prompted a dispute over the ethics of such a transplant.

“To a degree, it’s contemporary history,” Breo said of his book. “I kind of went out to those doctors and confronted them on their own terms. And in many cases, truth is stranger than fiction.”