Gifted Hands The Ben Carson Story

By Manuwant Choudhary

Is it just plain coincidence that while US President Barack Obama spends his hectic hours in New Delhi HBO telecast a great film `Gifted Hands The Ben Carson Story'? I watched Carson till the end.

I can say its better..much better ...than the Obama story.

Based on the real life of neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson at Johns Hopkins the film is inspirational on several counts.

So later i checked the wikipedia for some background and here it is:

Benjamin Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan. His mother, Sonya, had dropped out of school in the third grade and married at the age of 13. Carson's father abandoned the family after Sonya discovered he had another wife and kids, leaving his mother to fend for he and his brother. However, his mother insisted that he and his brother (who is now an engineer) read at least two books a week then proceed to write reports on these books for her. This early education and encouragement shaped Carson's future.

In September 1987 Carson performed at DSA a procedure to separate a pair of seven-month-old German conjoined twins, who were joined at the head. Carson was the lead surgeon on the team which performed the complex procedure. - - In 1997 Carson and his team went to South Africa to separate Joseph and Luka Banda, infant boys from Zambia. Both boys survived, and neither one suffered severe brain damage. The Bandas were the first set of twins joined at the tops of their heads to be successfully surgically separated. The operation lasted 28 hours, from 10:15 to 4:46)

In 2003, Carson was a member of the surgical team that worked to separate conjoined adult siblings Ladan and Laleh Bijani. Neither survived the surgery. When asked why he had performed such a risky surgery, Carson stated that they conveyed to him they would rather die than stay conjoined.

Dr. Carson also pioneered the hemispherectomy (the surgical removal of the affected half of the brain) in cases of Rasmussen's encephalitis or syndrome in children.

In 2008 he won the Presidential medal for Freedom.

Carson is not a symbol of social justice. He embodies everything of what a human mind can achieve and what it still has to discover.

A part in the film where Carson loses his twin sons is most compelling he says "I could do nothing."

Later he cries "Oh Lord help me please."