Hybrid-Penn Bioethics Seminar Series (PBS): "The Other Disabled President: JFK’s Chronic Back Pain and Cover Up"- Beth Linker, PhD

The Other Disabled President: JFK’s Chronic Back Pain and Cover Up

Beth Linker, PhD

Department Chair, History and Sociology of Science
Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor in the social sciences
University of Pennsylvania

Paralyzed in 1921 from the waist down from polio, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept his disability and his use of assistive mobility devices out of the public eye. All events were staged, requiring the coordination of the secret service, close confidants, and the press to orchestrate his image as nondisabled. Because of this, author Hugh Gallagher has characterized the FDR presidency as a “splendid deception” of significant proportions. 

This talk argues that the same story can be told of John F. Kennedy.  Kennedy struggled with back pain since his early adulthood. By the time of his presidential inauguration in January 1961, he had already undergone three back surgeries. During the campaign, one political advisor later confessed that JFK mostly used crutches in private, before and after public events. During his presidency, he took high doses of painkillers and relied on a near constant use of a back brace, all the while denouncing “soft Americans” and their presumed lives of leisure.

Using archival documents from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Dr. Linker will explore JFK’s own splendid deception. In the end, Dr. Linker argues that contrary to the image of him advancing the cause of disability rights, JFK and his family fostered ableism, largely for their own political gains. 

Registration required; please feel free to bring lunch.
Streaming available via Zoom.