Roy Exum
It didn’t take long for the political slime to connect the dots and realize presidential candidate Ben Carson may have done some research with fetal tissue as a pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Medical complex in Baltimore. It is quite obvious he did because he was on the cutting edge of keeping babies alive. For 38 years he was, among other things, the director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the world-famed medical center.
Carson handled his critics easily, poo-poohing their “startling announcement” for what it really was – “desperate” and completely ignorant of the way medical research is carried out. “You have to look at the intent. To willfully ignore evidence that you have, for some ideological reason, is wrong. If you are killing babies and taking the tissue, that’s a very different thing than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it.”
Carson, whose stock continues to rise in his bid for the Republican nomination, also told the Washington Post, “When we obtain tissue like that, we want to know what the origin of that tissue is developmentally," he explained. "Knowing that helps us determine which patients are likely to develop a problem. It’s one of the reasons why, at the turn of the last century, the average age of death was 47. Now, the average age of death is 80. Using the information that you have is a smart thing, not a dumb thing."
Consider this fact -- From 2011 through 2014, the National Institutes of Health have awarded 97 research institutions over $280 million for fetal tissue research. They use it to learn about AIDS, spinal-cord injuries, Parkinson’s and everything else in the medical gamut so people will live better and longer. Forget the Planned Parenthood well-deserved mess -- the world’s top scientists will confirm fetal tissue and its cells are “absolutely critical.”
Carson insisted his research with fetal tissue was done “the right way” and that one big reason – if the election – was tomorrow, he would get my vote. I’ve been a big fan of his for over 25 years. I became enamored back in 1987, when Carson successfully separated co-joined twins – the famous Binder case – where Ben led a hand-picked 70-person surgical team that separated two children that were joined at the back of their heads. Both kids survived, too.
But the better story is Ben’s mother met his future dad near Collegedale on the outskirts of Chattanooga. Both were Seventh-Day Adventists and his dad, Robert, was on his way to becoming a pastor (that’s with an asterisk!) Robert was 28 when he married Sonya Copeland in 1950 and why somebody didn’t hit the preacher in the head with an axe that day we’ll never know – Sonya was just 13 years old.
The newly-weds looked around the Jim Crow South and there wasn’t much promise so they moved to Detroit where the preacher (with an asterisk) got a job building Cadillacs. Soon the “asterisk” in Robert jumped out when Ben’s mom, barely 16, found out the preacher had another family. Sonya ran away to Boston, taking Ben and his new little brother Curtis to live with her sister.
Dr. Carson remembered the Boston experience was dreadful. “Sirens, gangs, murders, rats, roaches – the whole nine yards. Both of my cousins who lived with us were killed in that environment,” he said, adding that he and his brother were doing miserably in school.
The Carsons went back to Detroit where Ben’s mother – who only had a third-grade education – hatched a plan. “She wanted something better for us,” Ben would later say, so his mom took the Carson boys to the Detroit Public Library and made them read rather than watch TV. She made each boy not only read two or three books every week, but demanded a hand-written book report.
“She made us tell her about the book as she pored over each report. When we started taking about the book, she could discuss it and she really fooled us. She was a very smart woman,” Ben smiled, “but she was unable to read a word. She couldn’t read but made sure we could.
“Those books had a transformative effect. It made just an enormous difference in me and my academic success." Ben’s mother was also a big influence in her children excelling in everything. Not many people know that Ben Carson turned down an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy, which speaks volumes.
Instead he went to Yale, got his medical degree at the University of Michigan and did his residency at Johns Hopkins. You’d be a fool not to know that the hurdles he conquered and the mountains-in-life he climbed as a black medical student back then in the lily-white world of medicine proved his mettle indeed.
When Dr. Carson became the the director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, he was 33 years old – one of the youngest department chiefs at Johns Hopkins to this day. He was regarded as one of the top neurosurgeons in the world before he retired in 2013 and his “walking around sense” is unequaled in my opinion.
There are some critics who call him an “Uncle Tom,” a traitor to his race. Well, I think it is because the Democratic Party has ascribed to the Lyndon Johnson philosophy. I don’t know if you know, but Lyndon Johnson said, "If you give those N-word such and such, they’ll vote for us for the next 200 years."
“What the Republican Party needs to do,” he continued, “is come out and discuss more the kinds of relationships and the programs that will actually bring people out of poverty. That will also give them the ability to use their God-given talents to rise rather than to simply be satisfied in a dependent position in society.”
I also like his stance on “Black Lives Matter.” He was ready when asked at a recent gathering: “The main thing I would say is make sure to pay attention to who you are listening to and use that brain God gave you,” he said. “And let’s concentrate using our energy to figure out ways we can stop the shootings.
“Do black lives matter? Of course they do, and the fact of the matter is that the most likely cause of death for a young black male is homicide,” the Republican presidential candidate continued. “Let’s look at that and figure out what we can do to stop that.”
Yes sir, I like Ben Carson more than anybody else right now. I have a long time before I vote so I can change my mind, but if the election were today, Ben Carson’s my guy. I’m certainly not interested in another politician.
royexum@aol.com