President Reagan’s colon cancer: Insight from Dr. Sarkis Chobanian

Patients and friends of Dr. Sarkis Chobanian know his esteemed past as a gastroenterologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he served on the GI team for President Ronald Reagan.

What many do not know, however, are the details of that experience: the physician who settled for nothing less than perfection and thus discovered Reagan’s colon cancer – and the risk that, without that diagnosis, the cancer would have spread and weakened the president’s health and resolve in a pivotal time in Cold War history.

Dr. Chobanian recounts this experience and the impact he believes it made on U.S. and world history in an article he penned for American College of Gastroenterology’s ACG Magazine: “How a Navy gastroenterologist did his part to bring down the Berlin Wall and end the Cold War.”

You can read the full article below.