Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to surround herself with more scandals than you can shake a stick at, as we said when I was growing up in Texas. We had the Mena, Arkansas scandals when her husband, Bubba, otherwise known as William Jefferson Clinton, was Attorney General and then Governor. Ambrose Evans Pritchard, the British Telegraph investigative journalist did a masterful documentation of that in his The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, when Bill was President facing impeachment in the 1990’s. Then there are the Clinton Foundation scandals documented in the 2015 Peter Schweitzer book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, detailing how Hillary abused her office as Secretary of State to steer huge Saudi and other “donations” to the Clinton Foundation on whose board she sat as soon as leaving office as Secretary of State. There are of course the national security e-mail server scandals which a corrupted Attorney General and a corrupt FBI director swept under the rug. This latest scandal puts all others in the background. It’s her refusal to release all medical records detailing her medications and true state of health following a brain concussion in 2012. The Democratic candidate is likely medically suffering from irreversible dementia.

On August 8, a New Jersey radio host and blogger released what he claimed were leaked copies of Hillary Clinton’s 2014 medical records from her doctor, Lisa Bardack M.D. of the Mt. Kisco Medical Group in upstate New York. According to the documents, Dr. Bardack wrote that Clinton had “early-onset Subcortical Vascular Dementia” following a serious brain concussion she suffered from a fall when she was Secretary of State, on December 7, 2012. After that fall, she spent six months in constant hospital care according to Bill Clinton, who told ABC News in 2014 that her injury “required six months of very serious work to get over.” On February 1, 2013 Secretary of State and future Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, abruptly resigned as Secretary of State with no link to her health mentioned.

ABCNews in May, 2014 cited the following quote from her doctors, one of whom was Dr. Lisa Bardack: “In the course of a routine follow-up MRI on Sunday, the scan revealed…a clot in the vein that is situated in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. It did not result in a stroke, or neurological damage. To help dissolve this clot, her medical team began treating the Secretary with blood thinners…” – Dr. Lisa Bardack, Mt. Kisco Medical Group, and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi, George Washington University.

According to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Subcortical Vascular Dementia “is a progressive disease; there is no cure.” Symptoms include forgetfulness, changes in speech, an unsteady gait, clumsiness or frequent falls, changes in personality or mood. Candidate Clinton has been filmed by the media in recent weeks frequently stumbling and falling for no apparent reason. She often appears on the podium with a man whose function appears to be there in case she loses balance. The copy of Dr. Bardack’s 5 February 2014 follow-up examination, if genuine, states that Mrs. Clinton reported to her that the “blacking out, uncontrollable twitching and memory loss have become worse…The patient scored significantly lower on today’s test than when tested in 2013…The patient is also showing signs of having more frequent complex seizures.”

The Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, an internationally renowned center for research on Altzheimers and other brain illnesses, defines “Subcortical Vascular Dementia” as follows: Subcortical vascular dementia, also called Binswanger’s disease, is caused by widespread, microscopic areas of damage to the brain resulting from the thickening and narrowing (atherosclerosis) of arteries that supply blood to the subcortical areas of the brain.

Now on August 17, the Clinton campaign headquarters released a statement purporting to be from Dr. Bardack and provided to FactCheck.org. In the statement Dr Bardack is quoted stating that the leaked health documents were not authentic, declaring they were “false, were not written by me and are not based on any medical facts.”

Given the highest issues of the true health situation of a candidate quite possibly becoming the next US President, however, it is not satisfactory that the statement is released by Clinton’s campaign to FactCheck.org and is not made directly by Dr. Bardack herself to lay rumors to rest. She herself refuses to reply to press queries. So the quoted denial is not at all sufficient, given the very high stakes for the nation and world. Whatever the truth of the alleged leaked medical report of Dr. Bardack, it is a matter of undeniable record that Clinton has repeatedly been filmed during the campaign stumbling and falling. Poor balance is typically associated with strokes or head injuries. Did she suffer a stroke in December, 2012 that caused her to fall and suffer a concussion, or did the brain concussion cause the stroke? Are her frequent severe coughing attacks a result of anti-seizure medication? If so, which?

Relevant also is a report run in the online site, Infowars, by Paul Joseph Watson, reporting on information provided to his associate at the recent Republican National Convention in Cleveland by a Secret Service “whistleblower,” who reportedly stated, based on direct observation of other Secret Service agents detailed to the Clinton campaign that:

“– Hillary has a very serious neurological degeneration which could be Parkinson’s disease; – Around half a million dollars has been spent to specially adapt three SUVs in which Hillary travels to provide lowered floors and disabled access to prevent Hillary from tripping. – Hillary’s staff is so intent on keeping reporters away from Clinton because she is at risk of petit mal seizures that can be triggered by camera flashes; – Hillary has major problems with balance, difficulties with walking and keeps falling down; – Hillary’s campaign will be forced into making a big announcement soon regarding her medical condition.”

That was reported at the Infowars website on 15 August. Two days later, not Dr. Bardack but the Clinton Campaign via FactCheck.org releases a purported denial of the authenticity of the leaked health documents. Was this the major announcement expected? If so, it appears a poor job.

What then do the true records of Dr Bardack reveal? What do the medical records of Hillary Rodham Clinton when she underwent the six months of very intensive treatment reportedly in New York City’s Columbia University Medical Center reveal about her condition? What, if any, medication is she on today? Is she on blood-thinners? If so, which and what doses so that competent medical experts can comment on the risks. Anti-depressant drugs? Aspirin?

A candidate for public office, especially the highest office in the nation is no longer an ordinary private person. They have a responsibility to be open about their true medical condition. So far, Hillary Clinton has refused. Not only is it irresponsible, it is alarming, truly scary. The mainstream liberal USA media is not touching the issues in any serious way. We have a right to access to a complete and unbiased analysis of her health and medical treatment. She is a candidate for US President, the one with the finger on the nuclear button. She is not running for City Council of Mt. Kisco or president of the local Parent-Teachers’ Association. If her own husband states to the media in 2014 that she had “a terrible concussion that required six months of very serious work to get over,” this is no minor event.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”