Cheney Doctor, Reportedly in Drug Treatment, Is Let Go

One of Vice President Dick Cheney’s physicians, for years a prominent spokesman on the vice president’s health, has been dropped from his medical team and is reportedly battling an addiction to prescription drugs.

The doctor, internist Gary Malakoff, was relieved last month as chairman of George Washington University Medical Center’s general internal medicine division, the New Yorker magazine reports in its current issue. The magazine says Malakoff was battling a prescription drug addiction in 2000, at the same time he treated Cheney for his most recent heart attack and declared the vice president “up to the task of the most sensitive public office.”

Cheney’s first heart attack occurred in 1978, when he was 37 years old. He suffered other attacks in 1984, 1988 and 2000, and had quadruple bypass surgery after his third attack. He has twice undergone procedures to open blocked arteries. A cardiac defibrillator, which monitors his heart rhythm and adjusts it if necessary, was implanted in his chest in June 2001.

According to the New Yorker, Malakoff has been enrolled since 1999 in a drug treatment program run by the Medical Society of the District of Columbia. The society determined recently that Malakoff was not fit to see patients, and he was put on leave until September, the magazine says.

Kevin Kellems, Cheney’s press secretary, said Monday that Malakoff was no longer treating the vice president, but did not explain why. “Dr. Malakoff is a private citizen. He is not a government employee. The office of the vice president does not comment on the lives of private citizens,” Kellems said.

The team that monitors Cheney’s health, Kellems said, consists of a number of George Washington University Hospital and White House physicians.

“The results of his most recent routine comprehensive checkup in May were very good,” Kellems said. “He was advised by his physicians that there is no health issue that would interfere with his running for reelection or holding office for a second term.”

A George Washington University official, on condition of anonymity, confirmed Monday that Malakoff was on leave, and said the university would have no further comment until today.

A 1982 graduate of George Washington University’s medical school, Malakoff was named in Washingtonian magazine’s most recent listing of top doctors in the area. An official familiar with Cheney’s treatment said Malakoff had not played as significant a role in his care in recent years as he had previously.

The magazine quoted Malakoff’s colleagues and records from his 2002 divorce, which include medical invoices and pharmacy records, as saying that in 1999 Malakoff was placed in a program for impaired physicians, which included urinalysis and other monitoring.

The magazine said that according to records, Malakoff purchased 76 bottles of Stadol, a narcotic nasal spray, over four months in 2000. The magazine also reported that during a 2 1/2-year period ending in December 2001, Malakoff spent at least $46,238 online for Stadol, used to treat migraines, and other medications, including Tylenol with codeine, the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and the anti-insomnia drug Ambien.