Tag: book

From the O.R. to the Oval Office- 3 Docs Who Ran- Part 2

This concludes a two part series about physicians who ran for U.S. President in 2016.

Updated August 6, 2026
Here is the link to Part 1

Benjamin Carson, M.D., Republican

These notes about Dr. Carson are taken from his 1992 autobiography

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
  1. Dr. Carson’s mother, Sonya, one of 24 children,  married at age 13 ;her husband abandoned her when Dr. Carson and his brother were young boys. An uneducated illiterate woman, she taught herself to read, and required her sons to read books weekly.
  2. While he was growing up, his family depended on food stamps to have enough to eat.
  3. At age 8, after hearing a missionary doctor speak at his church, he decided to become a physician.
  4. He had such poor vision, he was almost legally blind. His grades improved when he started wearing glasses.
  5. As a teenager, he had such a quick and fiery temper, her feared he might kill someone.
  6. Both he and his brother were in JROTC while in high school; his brother served in the Navy during the Vietnam War.
  7. In high school he played clarinet and developed a love of classical music, something he would share with his future wife Candy.
  8. He chose to attend Yale over Harvard, because Yale beat Harvard in the GE College Bowl television program.
  9. During college he worked at the Ford Auto plant and at Chrysler.
  10. He and Candy lived in Australia for one year so he could train in neurosurgery there- and his first child was born in Australia that year.
  11. His third child was born at home- and he did the unplanned, quick delivery while his mother dialed 911 for help.

Neurosurgical Notes

Neurosurgery is the surgical specialty that deals with the nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord. Long before Dr. Carson became involved in politics, he was known for his pioneering work in brain surgery. He discusses this work in his autobiography, which was also made into a movie of the same name. In the movie Cuba Gooding Jr. played Dr. Carson.

Dr. Carson specialized in two difficult and dangerous types of surgeries.

In hemispherectomy  half of the brain is surgically removed as a treatment for severe, intractable seizures. It is only used as a last resort, is not always successful and can cause paralysis on one side of the body. Dr.Carson was known as an expert in this surgery.

Conjoined or Siamese twins joined at the head are rare, occurring in 1 in 2 million births.

“In 1987, Carson attracted international attention by performing a surgery to separate 7-month-old occipital craniopagus twins in Germany.

Patrick and Benjamin Binder were born joined at the head. Their parents contacted Carson, who went to Germany to consult with the family and the boys’ doctors. Because the boys were joined at the back of the head, and because they had separate brains, he felt the operation could be performed successfully.

Gifted Hands movie
Gifted Hands- The Ben Carson Story movie version starring Cuba Gooding Jr.

Randall “Rand” Paul, M.D., Republican

“Paul officially announced his presidential candidacy on April 7, 2015. Within a day of his announcement, Paul raised $1 million.[221]Paul announced the suspension of his presidential campaign on February 3, 2016, shortly after the Iowa caucus, where he finished in fifth place.[233]

Paul supports repealing the Affordable Care Act[378] and opposes universal health care, having once equated it to slavery.[379] Paul says he instead favors expanding health savings accounts and providing a $5000 tax credit, allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines, and allowing individuals and small businesses to pool together to purchase insurance. His plan would provide a two-year window during which people with pre-existing conditions could not be denied coverage.[380][381][382]

Paul announced on March 22, 2020, that he had tested positive for COVID-19 amid the ongoing pandemic of the disease. He was the first member of the United States Senate to test positive.[414][415] Paul received bipartisan criticism from his Senate colleagues after it was discovered that he attended Senate lunches and used the Senate gym while awaiting his test results; he defended his actions because he had no symptoms of the illness and believed it was “highly unlikely” he was sick.[416] On April 7, 2020, Paul announced his recovery.[417]“

source:Wikipedia,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rand_Paul

Exploring the HEART of Health

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Dr. Aletha

Dr. Charles Krauthammer- a physician to know

Charles Krauthammer-wit and wisdom about medicine and politics; and a review of his memoir

Welcome. You may want to proceed to an updated version of this post here

Dr. Charles Krauthammer- a physician to know- in memoriam

As a physician, I am intrigued and inspired knowing Dr. Krauthammer completed medical school and residency after and despite sustaining a spinal cord injury which caused quadriplegia (paralysis from the neck down, preventing use of his arms and legs).

To call Dr. Charles Krauthammer an opinion writer is a vast understatement. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who writes for  The Washington Post and a commentator for Fox News.

With wit and wisdom he addresses a wide variety of headlining topics, as well as some more mundane, including politics, economics,education, relationships and  lifestyle. His previous background as a practicing psychiatrist qualifies him to comment on medical issues with experience and insight.

As a physician, I find it intriguing and inspiring  that Dr. Krauthammer completed medical school and residency after and despite sustaining a spinal cord injury which caused quadriplegia (paralysis from the neck down, preventing use of his arms and legs).

Here are excerpts from a sampling of his recent articles that deal with medical topics;  I encourage you to read them in their entirety.

After watching videos in which

 The price of fetal parts

was discussed over lunch, Dr. Krauthammer wrote this-

“Abortion critics have long warned that the problem is not only the obvious — what abortion does to the fetus — but also what it does to us. It’s the same kind of desensitization that has occurred in the Netherlands with another mass exercise in life termination: assisted suicide. It began as a way to prevent the suffering of the terminally ill. It has now become so widespread and wanton that one-fifth of all Dutch assisted-suicide patients are euthanized without their explicit consent.

There is more division about the first trimester because one’s views of the early embryo are largely a matter of belief, often religious belief. One’s view of the later-term fetus, however, is more a matter of what might be called sympathetic identification — seeing the image of a recognizable human infant and, now, hearing from the experts exactly what it takes to “terminate” its existence.

The role of democratic politics is to turn such moral sensibilities into law. This is a moment to press relentlessly for a national ban on late-term abortions.”

After

Another massacre, another charade 

 he had this to say about guns and laws about them.

“So with the Roseburg massacre in Oregon. Within hours, President Obama takes to the microphones to furiously denounce the National Rifle Association and its ilk for resisting “common-sense gun-safety laws.” His harangue is totally sincere, totally knee-jerk and totally pointless. At the time he delivers it, he — and we — know practically nothing about the shooter, nothing about the weapons, nothing about how they were obtained.

In the final quarter of his presidency, Obama can very well say what he wants. If he believes in Australian-style confiscation — i.e., abolishing the Second Amendment — why not spell it out? Until he does, he should stop demonizing people for not doing what he won’t even propose.”

 

cup of milk, plate of bread

 

 

In this tongue-in-cheek (pardon the pun)  post

 Food fads: Make mine gluten-full

he “preaches skepticism” about most current dietary advice.

“Exhibit A for medical skepticism, however, remains vitamin C. When Linus Pauling, Nobel laureate in chemistry (not nutrition), began the vitamin-C megadose fad to fend off all manner of disease, the whole thing struck me as bizarre. Yes, you need some C to prevent scurvy if you’re seven months at sea with Capt. Cook and citrus is nowhere to be found. Otherwise, the megadose is a crock. Evolution is pretty clever. For 2 million years it made sure Homo erectus, neanderthalensis, sapiens, what have you, got his daily dose without having to visit a GNC store.

Sure enough, that fashion came and went. But there are always new windmills to be tilted at. The latest is gluten.

Now, if you suffer from celiac disease, you need a gluten-free diet. How many of us is that? Less than 1 percent. And yet supermarket shelves are groaning with products proclaiming their gluten-freedom. Sales are going through the roof.”

Things That Matter by Charles Krauthammer
<a href="http://Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics""” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>THINGS THAT MATTER- Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics by Charles Krauthammer

I enjoyed reading THINGS THAT MATTER by Dr. Krauthammer.

His book is a collection of some of his more memorable opinion pieces as well as a memoir of his life, including medical school, his life-changing injury, psychiatric medical practice, his  journalism career, hobbies (chess and baseball) and life with his family. According to Amazon-

” Now, finally, the best of Krauthammer’s intelligence, erudition and wit are collected in one volume.”

Dr. Aletha