If Tsongas were still in the race, the new questions about his prognosis might well have ended his chances. Now they all but eliminate him as a vice-presidential choice. Just as dismaying is the behavior of his medical team. Takvorian says the 1987 follow-up was part of Tsongas’s original treatment. Another says he forgot. Such fact-trimming “does a major disservice to the medical profession,” says Philip Boyle, medical ethicist at New York’s Hastings Institute. Still, it’s Tsongas who is accountable. He urged voters to face painful economic truths. But when it came to talking about a painful part of his own past, he flinched.
