Meet the face of Rob Ford’s medical team
Dr. Zane Cohen, the man leading Mayor Rob Ford’s medical team, is an expert in colon and rectal surgery with a storied history.
Cohen became the public face of Ford’s medical saga with an abdominal tumour when he delivered a statement to the media Thursday evening at Mount Sinai Hospital.
“We are not going to have the results of the biopsy for another week,” Cohen told reporters. “Until we have that, there’s very little I can tell you as far as what we are going to have to do.”
Though his 45-year medical career has focused on colon and rectal surgery, Cohen proved himself a deft hand at public relations when it came time to field questions.
As TV cameras rolled, Cohen batted away reporters’ enticements to speculate about Ford’s prognosis.
Possibly drawing on his teaching experience as a professor of surgery at the University of Toronto, Cohen shushed clamouring reporters with a raised hand and delivered a brief “anatomy lesson” on the colon.
Asked by one reporter whether the stress of the mayoral campaign could be a possible factor into the tumour’s growth, Cohen curtly replied: “I’m not a believer in stress-related masses.”
Cohen was awarded a medical degree in 1969 by the University of Toronto, according to his biography on Mount Sinai Hospital’s website. He is the director of a centre for digestive diseases at the hospital that bears his name.
Cohen has introduced several new surgical techniques and has written more than 230 manuscripts and book chapters.