If we quote/cite people who WERE there that's just THEIR opinion too. This is a type of thinking that is from the Dark Ages. Added: Yes, these are eyewitness accounts and they can be wrong; but we corroborate these accounts with additional evidence. An account PLUS additional evidence is all that we have.
In 2002, the historian Robert Dallek was given access by the Kennedy family to JFK's medical records. He discovered the medical regimen that Kennedy went through as president. It was an astonishing array of drugs.
He writes: "[The records] add telling detail to a story of lifelong suffering, revealing that many of the various treatments doctors gave Kennedy, starting when he was a boy, did far more harm than good. In particular, steroid treatments that he may have received as a young man for his intestinal ailments could have compounded—and perhaps even caused—both the Addison's disease and the degenerative back trouble that plagued him later in life. Travell's prescription records also confirm that during his presidency—and in particular during times of stress, such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco, in April of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October of 1962—Kennedy was taking an extraordinary variety of medications: steroids for his Addison's disease; painkillers for his back; anti-spasmodics for his colitis; antibiotics for urinary-tract infections; antihistamines for allergies; and, on at least one occasion, an anti-psychotic (though only for two days) for a severe mood change that Jackie Kennedy believed had been brought on by the antihistamines."
Travell was one of JFK's personal physicians when he was President.
Dallek: "The lifelong health problems of John F. Kennedy constitute one of the best-kept secrets of recent U.S. history—no surprise, because if the extent of those problems had been revealed while he was alive, his presidential ambitions would likely have been dashed."
But he didn't see the drugs given to JFK; he wasn't there. Just because the records indicate they were given to JFK doesn't mean they actually were So all of these records and accounts are just his opinion and speculation. Oy, what a mindset this is.
Full article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/12/the-medical-ordeals-of-jfk/305572/
Yes, it is incredible that anyone would even suggest that it is merely an "opinion" that JFK had serious medical issues and took numerous drugs for those issues. Facts that are well documented and that no one disputes. But it provides an insight into the contrarian mind. They can approach any fact that they do not wish to accept with this kind of loony logic. And dismiss it or cast doubt on it for that reason. Then without missing a beat they can imply all manner of facts of that they wish to be true without an iota of evidence. It is breathtaking in its stupidity. Compounded by their long winded lectures and insults trying to justify this bizarre line of "reasoning."
