Reno Discloses That She Has Parkinson’s Disease : Government: Attorney general is taking medication. But she says she feels fine and plans to stay on the job.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno disclosed Thursday that she has Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative condition that can cause tremors and loss of muscular control, but that she plans to stay on the job and feels “strong” and “fine.”

Her doctor--Jonathan Pincus, a neurology professor at Georgetown University Medical Center--said that the attorney general has a mild case of Parkinson’s, with no disability, and has become asymptomatic by taking “modest doses” of medicine.

Reno announced her condition at her regular weekly meeting with reporters, which was held despite the partial government shutdown. She said that Pincus had told her “that neither the disease nor the medication should impair my ability to do the job, and I intend to keep on doing it.”

The 57-year-old Reno, one of the most visible and easily recognized members of the Cabinet, told White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta of her announcement 30 minutes before meeting with reporters. She described him as “very supportive.” President Clinton then had “a very warm chat” with Reno, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.

“Everything we have heard suggests that for the indefinite future, there will be no diminution in her capacities,” a senior White House official said, adding that Reno should be able to serve through a second Clinton term if he is reelected in 1996.

“If there were some change . . . as I’ve always told the President . . . if I didn’t think I could do the job, I’d be the first person to tell him,” Reno said.

But Pincus made it clear that he did not expect this to be the case, noting that she has “an excellent, long-term prognosis.”

He noted that the “resting” tremor in her left hand, which prompted Reno to go to him about three weeks ago, is the least debilitating of the three symptoms of Parkinson’s, the more serious being rigidity and slow movement. In Reno’s case, those may never surface, the doctor said, because they would be masked by the medication.

She takes 1 1/2 Sinemet pills before each of her three daily meals.

So mild were Reno’s symptoms, Pincus said, that the only reason he treated her was because she was “annoyed” by the tremor. “It was a social inconvenience, not a physical inconvenience,” he said.

Reno said she “first noticed my hand shaking over the summer” but that she later was able to trace it back to the late spring. “I thought it would go away. I thought it was maybe you all picking on me,” she told reporters. “But it didn’t go away, so I went ahead and had it checked out.”

The tremor, which had become noticeable particularly when Reno was holding a piece of paper, was not apparent Thursday. Reno demonstrated her regained steadiness by thrusting out her left arm.

In reading about the disease, Reno said, she learned the symptoms sometimes “can be exacerbated by stress,” but Pincus said there was “no evidence for that.” She could continue on her medication for five to 10 years, Pincus said, after which she might have to change the frequency to every three hours, instead of only before meals.

Reno, who dons a “floppy old hat” on weekends so she doesn’t “look like an attorney general” while walking stretches of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal that parallels the Potomac River, said that she intends to continue her goal of conquering the entire 187-mile stretch between Georgetown and Cumberland, Md.

So far, she has walked 72 miles, “and I hope to make another 20 in the next two or three weeks.”

Responding to a question, Pincus distinguished between Reno’s condition and that of former Rep. Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.), who stayed in Congress for 12 years after he was found to have Parkinson’s in 1979, but then retired after suffering a “terrible, terrible fall” that “did real damage.”

His present condition of incapacitation was not “related” to Parkinson’s, Pincus said.

The disease itself does not kill, but when medication eventually loses its effect, the patient can become so debilitated as to be bedridden. Complications of that can be lethal.

Pincus said “nobody really knows” what causes Parkinson’s, noting that Reno has no family history of it. But he said that he did tell her that “people with rural backgrounds seem to be overrepresented” among those with the disease.

Reno, a dedicated fan of the outdoors, spent some of her younger years trekking through the Florida Everglades.