The Kennedy forces responded to these attacks by asserting that “John F. Kennedy does not now nor has he ever had an ailment described classically as Addison’s disease, which is a tubercular destruction of the adrenal gland. Any statement to the contrary is malicious and false.” In addition, Dr. Travell spent three or four hours with Dr. Eugene Cohen hammering out a statement on Kennedy’s health; it was dated June 11, 1960, and sent in letter form to Kennedy for release to the press. The two doctors found the statement difficult to write. In fact, Travell later admitted that they “fought over every word of it.” The statement read in part:
"We wish to point out that the fact that your adrenal glands do function has been confirmed by a leading endocrinologist outside of New York City.
With respect to the old problem of adrenal insufficiency, as late as December, 1958 when you had a general check-up with a specific test of adrenal function, the result showed that your adrenal glands do function."
After Kennedy won the presidential nomination of his party on the first ballot, there was considerable interest in the choice of his vice-presidential running mate. Highly revealing is a generally overlooked comment made by Philip Graham, late publisher of the Washington Post, in a memorandum concerning Lyndon Johnson’s selection for second place on the 1960 ticket:
"I told LBJ Jack would be phoning him and then…I returned to the vacant bedroom to call Adlai [Stevenson, the Democrats’ 1952 and 1956 presidential nominee]. In our prior talk he had argued for [Missouri Senator Stuart] Symington on pure expediency grounds and I had been a bit testy in pointing out that any VP was likely to be President." [Emphasis added]
During the general election campaign, an attempt was made to steal Kennedy’s health record; and the office of Dr. Cohen, the coauthor of the statement on his adrenal insufficiency, was actually vandalized. Also, prominent Republicans raised new questions about Kennedy’s health. Congressman Walter Judd of Minnesota, a former medical missionary and the 1960 Republican keynote speaker, stated unequivocally:
"For one thing I would like a flat answer to rumors in medical circles that Case Number Three in the American Medical Association’s Archives of Surgery, Vol. 71, relates to Senator Kennedy. If so, this represents information which Senator Kennedy is duty bound to make fully available to the consideration of every voter."
Republican questions about Kennedy’s health were diffused largely by the vigorous campaign he waged and by the image of vitality he projected. Except for the flu, acute sinusitis, and a case of laryngitis that “completely unnerved” him, he was well throughout the campaign period, and Dr. Travell saw him only once or twice. One of his closest aides expressed relief that the nominee’s “history of bed-confining fevers did not recur.” At one of his first press conferences after his election, Kennedy made an extraordinarily rare reference to the rumors of his ill health: he insisted to reporters, “I have never had Addison’s disease. I have been through a long campaign and my health is very good today.”
We know now that Kennedy’s Addison’s disclaimer was untrue, even though he may not have fully realized it at the time. Kennedy maintained that his adrenal insufficiency was a side effect of the malaria he contracted after the war. This is a possibility, since “malaria has been known to cause lesions in the adrenal cortex.” Since Kennedy did not suffer at any time from tuberculosis, he adrenal insufficiency seems likely to have resulted from atrophy of the adrenal glands. One medical specialist has reported that about half of all Addisonians he treated suffered from adrenal gland atrophy rather than from tuberculosis. Nine years after Kennedy’s death, his autopsy photographs were viewed by Dr. John Latimer who found that “no abnormal calcification could be seen…to suggest tuberculosis or hemorrhage of the adrenals. It is [my] firm belief that the President suffered from bilateral adrenal atrophy."