VP Joe Biden remains in Philadelphia, where son, Beau, is hospitalized after mild stroke

Biden’s son in Philadelphia hospital after stroke

PHILADELPHIA — Vice President Joe Biden’s older son, Delaware’s attorney general, was being treated at a renowned neuroscience hospital in Philadelphia on Wednesday after suffering a mild stroke.

The vice president and his wife, Jill, were expected to be in Philadelphia through Wednesday morning, but Biden’s dinner with Afghan President Hamid Karzai was still on for Wednesday night, the White House said. Biden is one of the Obama administration’s major voices in setting Afghanistan policy.

Beau Biden, 41, had been admitted to Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del., on Tuesday morning. Later in the day he was transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital about 45 miles away in Philadelphia, vice presidential spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said. The White House said earlier that he would undergo further observation and examination there.

Biden was expected to recover, his doctor said. The vice president gave a thumbs up to reporters as his motorcade left the hospital Tuesday night.

Jefferson is the only dedicated hospital for neuroscience in the Philadelphia region, its website says, and the largest center in the region for treating strokes and aneurysms.

The hospital is certified by the Joint Commission in Stroke as a Primary Stroke Center. It is one of a few hospitals in the Philadelphia area to be cited for excellence by The American Stroke Association and American Heart Association.

On Tuesday night, a Christiana Care ambulance arrived at Jefferson hospital, escorted by more than a dozen Delaware and Pennsylvania state police and Philadelphia police cars. Hospital officials declined to comment, referring questions to the vice president’s office.

In a statement issued through the White House, Christiana Hospital’s Dr. Timothy Gardner said Biden was in good spirits and was talking with his relatives. The doctor said Biden was fully alert and in stable condition and had full motor and speech skills. The vice president’s office said Gardner would not comment beyond the statement and would not take questions.

“The entire Biden family offers its sincerest thanks to the doctors, nurses and staff of the Christiana Care Health System who have provided tremendous care to Beau today,” the statement said.

Biden was expected to be back in Washington for the dinner at the vice president’s residence with a delegation from Afghanistan, including Karzai.

Beau Biden returned last year from a yearlong deployment to Iraq with his Army National Guard unit. He was a captain and military lawyer in the 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade. He had considered running this year for the Senate seat his father held before becoming vice president but decided instead to run for re-election as attorney general.

Beau Biden announced in January that he wouldn’t run for Senate, saying he needed to focus as attorney general on the high-profile criminal case against a pediatrician prosecutors say may have molested more than 100 children over the past decade.

The decision left vulnerable the seat Joe Biden held for 36 years. The elder Biden was away from that seat for seven months in 1988 after undergoing surgery for brain aneurysms.

More than a decade earlier, in 1972, he lost his wife and infant daughter when a tractor-trailer broadsided their station wagon when they were getting a Christmas tree. Beau and his brother, Hunter, were critically injured but recovered.

Beau Biden, who is married with two young children, has worked as an attorney in private practice. He also worked for the Department of Justice between 1995 and 1997 and as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1997 to 2002.

Associated Press writers JoAnn Loviglio in Philadelphia, Randall Chase in Newark, Del., Ben Nuckols in Baltimore, Brian Witte in Annapolis, Md., and Nafeesa Syeed and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.