Mark Dawes, Senior Staff Reporter
DR. BEN CARSON, Director of paediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Maryland, gained worldwide recognition for his part in the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head. The extremely complex and delicate operation, five months in the planning and 22 hours in the execution, involved a surgical plan that Dr. Carson helped initiate.
Dr. Carson, 51, pioneered again in a rare procedure known as hemispherectomy, giving children without hope a second chance at life through a daring operation in which he literally removed one half of their brain. But such breakthroughs aren't unusual for Ben Carson. He's been beating the odds since he was a child.
Raised in inner-city Detroit by a mother with a third-grade education, Ben lacked motivation. He had terrible grades. And a pathological temper threatened to put him in jail. But Sonya Carson, his mother convinced her son that he could make something of his life, even though everything around him said otherwise. Trust in God, a relentless belief in his own capabilities, and sheer determination catapulted Ben from failing grades to the top of his class and beyond to a Yale scholarship ... the University of Michigan Medical School ... and finally, at age 33, the directorship of paediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
Today, Dr. Ben Carson holds 20 honorary doctorates and possesses a long string of honours and awards, including the Horatio Alger Award, induction into the "Great Blacks in Wax" Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, and an invitation as keynote speaker at the 1997 President's National Prayer Breakfast.
He is the author of the million seller Gifted Hands which chronicles his early life in the inner city and his rise to the top of his profession.
Dr. Carson is a Christian and an elder in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He was the guest speaker on Saturday October 19, at a fund-raiser for the Mandeville Seventh-Day Adventist Church. While here, The Sunday Gleaner spoke with him. The following is an edited version of the conversation.
Q: What were the main points that you sought to get across to the people to whom you addressed last night (Saturday October 19, 2002)?
A: One of the big things is that we are made in the image of God and God is no dummy. And therefore we do not pay homage to our Creator when we go around acting like dummies. Or when we feel that we can't do this or we can't do that. The fact of the matter is that if we can imagine it and we are willing to put in the time and the effort, we can accomplish almost anything. I also wanted to get across, particularly for the black males, that we need to emphasise to them that there is a lot more to life than sports and entertainment. There is way too much emphasis on that in the media. And not enough emphasis on being a nuclear physicist or things like that which these young men are perfectly capable of doing. But if no one points them in the direction, then obviously they are not going to do it.
When you start reaching a point where you understand not how to buy a computer but how to make one; you understand not how to fly an aeroplane but how to make and aeroplane; then you begin to reach a point where you have real power. I would say to the young men develop your mind, and then instead of playing on the basketball team you can own the basketball team. Also the concept of values and principles as opposed to political correctness which I think is on the opposite end of the spectrum. Political correctness says nothing is really right, nothing is really wrong, everything is kinda relative. Values and principles says if something is not true it is a life - end of story. We need to emphasise that more or we start sliding down that precarious slope and we end up just like ancient Greece or ancient Rome where all the philosophers were sitting around philosophising about this and that and they forgot about anything that made any sense and they just argued themselves into oblivion.
Q: How do you think the Christian community can best minister to males so that they will be saved and that having been saved, they will want to stay in church?
A: It is very important that we should bring in front of the young males, male role models who have accomplished significant things. And they need to see that repeatedly and not just every now and then. Because they are being bombarded by the media with other images so you have to have some sort of counterpart balance or one side will completely dwarf the other side - I do find that when you have an opportunity to talk to these young men and point out to them what real manhood is, they will tend to listen. The media would have us believe that manhood is being macho, kicking down the door when somebody makes you angry. It really is just the opposite of that. It means that you have control over yourself and over your environment. It does not mean being an emotional wreck. That is something that needs to be emphasised because so many of them end up having encounters with the legal justice system. And then that perpetuates itself when they become associated with others of like attitude and instead of rehabilitation they go further and further into regression.
Q: What is neurology and how has being a neurosurgeon caused you to better appreciate the mind of the Creator?
A: Neurology deals with abnormalities of the brain, the spinal cord and the nervous system. On the surgical side, we deal with those things that have mechanical solutions. Neurology on the medical side provides medication, rehabilitation and various programmes for things that are non-surgical and that affect the brain and the spinal cord. One of the things that have become very apparent to me, the more I learn about the brain, is how incredibly complex it is. It has the ability to process more than two million bits of information per second. It remembers everything you have ever seen and ever heard. It is capable of doing almost anything. A person with a normal brain can learn virtually anything. A person may say 'Well I am not good at calculus, I can't do that kind of stuff' that is nonsense. Anybody can be good at calculus, it is just a matter if they got the right basics along the way. One of the reasons people think science and math are difficult is just that they don't have the right building blocks. Reading would be difficult if you knew only 21 of the 26 letters. And that is the way science and math are.
Q: How does a culture of crime and violence impact on one's neurological health?
A: Well certainly stress is extraordinarily detrimental. It affects your hormonal system, it affects your immune system. If you were sitting in a room and you were perfectly calm and relaxed, your heartbeat was normal, your blood pressure was normal, your bladder was working normal, and then into that room walked a hungry tiger, all of those things would change, your blood pressure would go through the roof, your heart rate would go up, your bladder would act up, all kinds of things would happen. Living in an environment of hungry tigers does that to you constantly. Needless to say, the effects of all of those alterations in your body on a constant basis will have a very detrimental effect on all of your organs including your brain. You will produce a stressed society.
Q: To what extent is there a relationship between poverty, low self-esteem, victimology and neurology?
A: The relationship has to do with the way one feels about himself. Where neurology comes in is that it is the brain that gives you your sense of who you are. An individual who finds himself in dire economic circumstances can see himself or herself as a victim and they can feel sorry for him/herself, they can use that as an excuse as to why they are not achieving. Or like my mother they can say, hey I can do something about this. It doesn't matter what situation I find myself in, I can work, I can learn, I can get myself out of that. The victim mentality is obviously a great depressor it pretty much abolishes the ability to accomplish. I say to people, it is not where you came from that counts it is where you are going and you are the one that make that determination. People are not like animals. Animals are victims of circumstances, all they can do is react. God gave people these incredible frontal lobes. Why do we have these huge frontal lobes, because we are the only animals He made with the ability to engage in rational thought processes. That means we can make extract information from the past and the present and we can project it into a plan for the future. Animals can't do that. We can look at somebody making bad choices, we can see those choices and we can see where it leads and we can say 'I am not going to do that.' Animals don't have the ability to do that. They just follow blindly because of whatever the circumstances happen to be. So the unfortunate thing is that some people choose to act like animals. And they choose to allow their environment and circumstances to dictate their behaviour. And that when you allow the victim mentality to rule your life.
Q: Are there any gender distinctives in the neurological scheme of things. Are there disorders that are peculiar to either gender?
A: Neurologically speaking, no one can prove that there is a difference in the brains of men and the brains of women in terms of how they react to different stimulation. A lot of the differences between men and women are socialised differences. Girls are taught 'You do this', and boys are taught 'You do that'. I do think there are some intangible things that cannot be proven on a physiological basis. For example the mother's instinct towards her child are just different, cannot prove it but we know it is there. Another example is principle of love. The scientist obviously cannot explain love, they cannot explain caring on the basis of natural selection or evolution because those things don't make any sense. Natural selection says you do those things that will preserve you, so why does a stranger jump into a lake to save somebody they don't know who is drowning. That does not make any sense scientifically speaking, and yet it happens.
Q: How does the practice of Christianity impact on neurological health?
A: There is a verse in the Bible, Isaiah 26:3 which says: Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. I think that's the answer right there. When you have a source of strength and comfort then all the other things out there don't bother you. In my situation, as a professor in a highly competitive environment, I don't have to go around trying to please this person or that person, I only have to please God and it makes my life so much simpler and so happier. For if God be for you who can be against you.
Q: How has September 11, 2001 affected your professional life?
A: It hasn't had a huge effect on me personally. But it does make me think a lot about the future of the world. The world will never be the same again. There is a huge amount of stress and fear out there. One of the things that I think about sometimes, is how can we solve this whole Middle East conflict. I have communicated with the President about it. I told him we need to be putting in place policies that have a long-term effect. Suppose you were to say within this decade we are going to become petroleum independent and we are going to move to another energy source and that energy source will be hydrogen. We have the technology to utilise hydrogen, for example, the fuel cells on the space shuttle are hydrogen-driven. BMW has already produced a hydrogen powered automobile. The by-product of hydrogen is water so in that way we don't pollute the environment. The economy would just go through the rough switching from petroleum to hydrogen and you would cut the legs from beneath Saddam Hussein and change the whole economic structure of the world.So I am waiting to see what he is going to do with that. I said to him your only problem will be the oil companies, and everyone thinks you are in their hip pocket anyway. I said you could even solve that problem because all you would have to do is tell them that they will be the point people for the production of liquid hydrogen and they already have the facilities and place to do that. And they will make plenty of money and they will be helping to clean the environment up.
Q: Did you meet face to face with the President to talk about this idea?
A: No I wrote him a letter. But I have met face to face with him on a number of occasions. I know him because I am on the board of trustees of Yale University and we gave him an honorary degree a couple years ago that's when I first got to know him. He and I have got to talking and I spoke to him about health care reform and various things. He invited me down to the Oval Office and we talked. Despite his reputation of not being very bright - he is actually quite bright and he listens to people who have good ideas.
Q: To what extent has Christianity made you a better neurosurgeon?
A: To the extent that I realise that I am not the one who does the operation. Christ does the operation. I am just there as a tool. Once I realised that, which was fairly early in my career, it took the stress out of my life. He gets all the credit for the good things that happen. He also gets the blame for the bad stuff. Also, I always ask Him for wisdom to know what to do. And to know which cases to take, to know what cases to stay away from and to know how far to go. The technical ability to operate, I feel blessed that He gave me that gift and that's why I called my (first) book 'Gifted Hands' because I believe He gave me that gift. The thing that is just as important and in fact more important is the wisdom and the judgement - and that is what I ask Him for on a daily basis.
Q: Make a closing comment for the Jamaican people.
A: Everybody has obstacles and problems in their lives. Even Bill Gates has problems. But success is determined not by whether you have problems but how you relate to them. And if you decide to use those problems as an excuse, then your life is a failure. If you decide to see those problems as hurdles, and you look for ways to get over them... then your life will be a success.
