Billmon:
Carson is product of the Christian right counterculture, doubt many in MSM had heard of him before he got traction as POTUS candidate.
A product that has been in the making for over twenty years. The “brilliant neurosurgeon” with the hands gifted to him by God. What a load of rot.
Dr. Carson isn’t the only African-American surgeon (and far from the first). Not the only African-American neurosurgeon (the first was Clarence Sumner Greene, Sr., board certified in 1953.) He’s not even the only or first African-American pediatric neurosurgeon. Dr. Alexa Canady, the first AA female pediatric neurosurgeon got there before Carson.
Carson may just be bolder than other pediatric neurosurgeons. [NYTimes 1993] One of his claims to fame is that the separated conjoined twins. (Not to be overlooked is that such patients are extremely rare. )
He managed to separate the two brains in about 20 minutes and to close the skull of the twin he was working on — with his mentor, neurosurgery chief Dr. Donlin Long, closing the other twin’s skull — in about another 40.
After the operation, the successfully separated twins went home to Ulm. But then, as far as the Hopkins staff was concerned, they disappeared. Despite repeated efforts, Dr. Carson has been unable to find out how Patrick and Benjamin, now 6 years old, are faring.
“I’ve written so many letters, and I’ve never gotten any response,” he said.
(In Ravensburg, Germany, a local physician said the boys were too disabled to live at home and were staying at a facility for handicapped children in the area.)
(Nothing further about the Binder twins seems to have been reported since that 1993 article.)
Would be unfair not also to note that it’s unknown how these twins would have fared without the surgery. (Laden and Laleh Bijani at the age of twenty-nine preferred the risk of death to remaining conjoined.)
While the accolades, “he saves babies,” continues for Dr. Carson, Dr. Canady lets us in on a little fact about pediatric neurosurgery:
The most rewarding part is that most of the time you can make them better.
Dr. Canady’s reflection on her career:
After 30 years as a surgeon, I retired this past January. Looking back, what stands out in my memory are the special relationships I had with my young patients. The hours we spent cross-legged on the floor playing video games, and the sound of their laughter floating through the hospital hallways. The children taught me so much — about living in the moment with tremendous courage and grace despite serious and often terminal illnesses. I took care of some children for 15 to 20 years. I watched them grow up. I got up in the middle of the night to care for them. I cared for every single one of them as if they were my own.
The Guardian, Ben Carson’s house: a homage to himself – in pictures . (I have no words for the painting of Dr. Carson with Jesus.)
Dr. Canady believes that “Surgery is a service business. You provide a service as unobtrusively as possible. But you must be human. In order to provide good quality care, it is so important that patients are able to talk to you and not regard you as some deity above them.”
There’s one other University of Michigan Medical School AA graduate that is an eminent neurosurgeon, Dr. Keith L. Black. and deserves mention here.
I get the strong impression from Dr. Canady and Dr. Black that they wouldn’t hit the faith-based lecture circuit and deny evolution to fleece the ignorant.
Update #1
[What follows isn’t new information, but seems too important to dump into a comment.} In Janary 2015 Buzzfeed reported on the plagiarism in Dr. Carsons’s latest autobiography. Ben Carson’s History Book Plagiarizes SocialismSucks.Net And Many Other Sources. Several of those he stole from didn’t mind and as for the others, team Carson said “oops” and apparently got a pass. However, the more interesting part of the Buzzfeed article was a section from Carson’s book:
Not long after that, when I was a psychology major delving into the mysteries of the human mind, I stepped unknowingly into yet another moral dilemma. During my research for one of the papers in an advanced psychology course, I found some passages that seemed particularly appropriate, and I included them in my writing. I did not, however, indicate that this was the work of someone else; frankly, I had never even heard of the term plagiarism. When the professor asked me to make an appointment to discuss my paper, I was befuddled . When I stepped into his office, however, I could immediately sense the weight of the moment. He pointed out that I had plagiarized and told me that the consequences for doing so normally included expulsion. I could see all of my dreams of becoming a doctor dashed by my stupidity. Even though I did not know the implications of plagiarism, I certainly should have known inherently that what I was doing was wrong. I had done it before without consequences and probably would have continued doing it if I had not been caught. Fortunately for me, the professor was very compassionate, realized that I was naïve, and gave me a chance to rewrite the paper. This raises another question: Is ignorance an acceptable excuse for unethical behavior?
Two points. How does someone graduate from high school at the top of his class and with honors what plagiarism is and the consequences of doing it? And if somehow the educational standards weren’t high enough in his junior and senior high schools to lay that down, how he escaped coming by the knowledge in his freshman English classes at Yale?
In keeping with his redemption stories, he also acknowledges having plagiarized a lot before getting caught doing it in an “advanced” course. I would also question that any Yale undergrad psych at that time focused on the “deep mysteries of the mind,” but that line of inquiry wasn’t absent during the age of “behaviorism;” so, it’s possible that he had one professor pushing on the conventional wisdom of the day. The most likely course that would have exposed his plagiarism is Experimental Psych because those courses require several papers in a term and library research is integral to the write-ups.
Finally, how does this admitted serial plagiarist get a pass when you-know-who doesn’t? Slate 2008
…
But Biden’s exit from the 1988 race is worth recalling in detail, … Biden’s misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect. …But unlike Hart’s plight, Biden’s can’t be blamed on an overly intrusive or hectoring press corps. The press was right to dig into this one.
…
I don’t disagree with the Slate’s assessment. But would add that such a “character defect” also suggests that one is aware of not being in the same league as the competition or material. The GWB’s of the world can float through by earning “gentleman’s C’s,” but scholarship students generally can’t or don’t think they can. Is it any wonder that Carson seems especially ignorant and/or nutty outside the zone of neurosurgery?
