One of Hopkins' own, Benjamin Carson, kicked off the 2009 MSE Symposium this Tuesday with a discussion of issues in education and America's position in world opinion and healthcare reform, as well as telling the story of his own education and career.
The symposium's theme for the year, "A Transition between Generations in a Changing America," seeks to highlight how the upcoming generation will change the nation.
Carson quickly issued a blanket disclaimer: "I do not believe in political correctness."
It is crucial, he explained, for people to be able to speak up and not censor their own thoughts and beliefs. He drew the parallel that in Nazi Germany the majority of the citizens did not actively believe or participate in the violence that occurred, but they did not speak against it and became complicit by default.
With that lesson in mind, Carson said, "It is not my intention to offend people; and if I do, too bad."
Carson then segued into another passionate topic for him: American education and its deteriorating position in the world. He cited a study comparing 8th grade math competency in 22 nations - in which America placed 21.
America produces a fraction of the engineers that China does, and Carson cautioned that this was not a sustainable trend for American prominence. Egypt, Greece, Rome and Britain are all examples of once-great nations that slowly crumbled from stagnation and complacency.
"Can we be the first nation in the history of the world to actually learn from those who preceded us?" Carson asked. "Or must we inexorably go down the same path of self-destruction?"
On health-care reform, Carson laid out his own prescription for change. He challenged the audience to start thinking of their own new ideas and to consider running for Congress.
He mentioned that in American history, there used to be more doctors in public service, but now "the show is run primarily by lawyers."
"Democrat lawyers, Republican lawyers - they are simply trying to win for their side, not for the people. This gives rise to something unintended: the career politician. As a permanent fixture in D.C., they care little about their constituencies and become infested with lobbyists as they focus on their goals of re-election," he said.
Carson stressed the need to get health-care under individual control and the need to remove the health insurance companies run by middle-men that can legally profit from denying people care.
To do this, Carson suggests making the federal government responsible for catastrophic care, leaving conventional health insurance responsible only for routine care.
This would then allow the government to regulate health insurance as a utility. Health insurance companies would still be allowed to make a certain amount of profit, but five percent would go to this U.S. catastrophic health fund.
The statistic of the 10-15 percent of Americans living without health-care is a fallacy, explained Carson, as every hospital in America is required to provide care and cannot lawfully turn away a patient.
However, by adopting a "food-stamp" model for health-care, in which patients receive an electronic account of health dollars to spend at their discretion, the government could drastically reduce the abuse of emergency rooms. Carson advocated tort reform to improve end-of-life care and thinks shifting the cost of billing paperwork onto the physician would reduce costs for health insurance companies, thereby reducing premiums.
He described a setup where doctors are given the responsibility to document procedures and bills where medical fraud is met with such a harsh punishment that it would become unthinkable.
Carson cautioned that lobbyists in D.C. have created a pattern of opposing fundamental change and hindering logical action, and that at some point the populace will have to be sufficiently motivated to address this.
Carson also told the audience about his own background and explained how he ended up as a doctor at the Hopkins Hospital.
From the age of eight, young Carson dreamed of being a doctor. The tales told in church of missionary doctors in far-off places convinced him that no other calling was "more noble, more interesting."
Around the age of 13, Carson modified his plans and aspired to be a psychiatrist instead.
"I didn't know any psychiatrists, but on television they seemed to be rich people . . . and all they had to do was talk to crazy people all day," Carson said.
After majoring in psychology at Yale, Carson quickly understood the disparity between real life and television. After much soul-searching, Carson put his motor-skills and eye-hand coordination together and trained to become an adult neurosurgeon. Later, he realized the pediatric neurosurgery was more interesting to him.
"With a kid, you can operate for 10, 14, 16 hours and, if you're successful, your reward may be 30, 40, 50, 60 years of life," said Carson.
"Whereas with an old geezer, you spend all of that time operating on them and they die in five years of something else. I like to get a big return on my investment," Carson said.
At the end of his talk, Carson received a standing ovation. He then took questions from the audience, in which he addressed his prescription for success - which was strongly related to healthy living, the perceived gap between religion and science, and the need to focus on a goal in order to deal with crises of self-confidence.
Several of the students in attendance had already heard of Carson before the event.
"It's because of Dr. Carson that I learned of Johns Hopkins and became inspired to enter the field of medicine," said freshman Mychaela Morrell.
Amanda Leininger, also a freshman, first learned about Carson when she did a report on him for Black History Month in third grade and was excited to hear him speak.
