on speaking at the
Conservative Political Action Conference in 2014.
Benjamin Solomon '
Ben'
Carson Sr. (born
September 18, 1951) is an American
author and retired
neurosurgeon. He is
credited with being the first surgeon to successfully separate
conjoined twins
joined at the head. In 2008 he was awarded the
Presidential
Medal of Freedom by President
George W. Bush.
After delivering a widely publicized speech at the 2013
National
Prayer Breakfast, he became a popular
conservative
figure in political media for his views on social and political
issues, spurring talk of his becoming a Republican candidate for
the
2016 presidential election.
Early life[edit]
Carson was born in
Detroit,
Michigan, the son of Sonya (née Copeland), a
Seventh-day
Adventist, and Robert Solomon Carson, a
Baptist Minister.
[1]
His parents were both from rural
Georgia.
[1]
When he was 8 years old, his parents divorced and he and his
10-year-old brother, Curtis, were raised by their
mother.
[2]
He attended
Southwestern
High School in
Southwest
Detroit and graduated from
Yale University,
where he majored in
psychology.
[3]
He received his
M.D. from the
University of Michigan Medical School.
Medical career[edit]
Dr. Ben Carson
Carson was a professor of
neurosurgery,
oncology,
plastic surgery,
and
pediatrics, and he
was the director of pediatric neurosurgery at
Johns Hopkins
Hospital.
[4]
At age 33, he became the youngest major division director in Johns
Hopkins history, as director of pediatric neurosurgery. He was also
a co-director of the Johns Hopkins Craniofacial Center.
According to
Johns Hopkins
Hospital literature, “Dr. Carson focuses on traumatic brain
injuries, brain and spinal cord tumors,
achondroplasia,
neurological and congenital disorders,
craniosynostosis,
epilepsy, and
trigeminal
neuralgia. He is also interested in maximizing the intellectual
potential of every child.”
[4]
Carson believes his
hand–eye
coordination and three-dimensional reasoning skills made him a
gifted surgeon.
[5]
After medical school, he became a neurosurgery resident at Johns
Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Starting off as an adult
neurosurgeon, Carson became more interested in pediatrics. He
believed that with children, “what you see is what you get,... when
they’re in pain they clearly show it with a frown on their face or
when they are happy they show it by smiling
brightly.
[5]”
In 1987 Carson successfully separated
conjoined
twins, the Binder twins, who had been joined at the back of the
head, making them
craniopagus
twins. The 50-member surgical team, led by Carson, worked for
22 hours. At the end, the twins were successfully separated and can
now survive independently. As Carson said in an interview:
I was talking to a friend of mine, who was a
cardiothoracic surgeon, who was the chief of the division, and I
said, 'You guys operate on the heart in babies, how do you keep
them from exsanguinating' and he says, 'Well, we put them in
hypothermic arrest.' I said, 'Is there any reason that -- if we
were doing a set of Siamese twins that were joined at the head --
that we couldn't put them into hypothermic arrest, at the
appropriate time, when we're likely to lose a lot of blood?' and he
said, 'No.' I said, 'Wow, this is great.' Then I said, 'Why am I
putting my time into this? I'm not going to see any Siamese twins.'
So I kind of forgot about it, and lo and behold, two months later,
along came these doctors from Germany, presenting this case of
Siamese twins. And, I was asked for my opinion, and I then began to
explain the techniques that should be used, and how we would
incorporate hypothermic arrest, and everybody said 'Wow! That
sounds like it might work.' And, my colleagues and I, a few of us
went over to Germany. We looked at the twins. We actually put in
scalp expanders, and five months later we brought them over and did
the operation, and lo and behold, it
worked.[6]
Carson figured in the revival of the
hemispherectomy,
a drastic surgical procedure in which part or all of one hemisphere
of the brain is removed to control severe pediatric
epilepsy. He refined
the procedure in the 1980s, encouraged by Dr. John M.
Freeman,
[7]
and performed it many times.
[8][9]
In addition to his responsibilities at Johns Hopkins, he has served
on the boards of the
Kellogg Company,
Costco, and the
Academy of
Achievement. He is an
emeritus fellow of
the
Yale
Corporation.
In March 2013, Carson announced he would retire as a surgeon,
stating “I’d much rather quit when I'm at the top of my game, and
there’s so many more things that can be
done.”
[10]
His retirement became official on July 1, with Carson saying he
would leave the decision of whether to go into politics “in the
hands of God, but much can be done outside the political arena.”
[11]
Awards and honors[edit]
Carson is a member of the
American
Academy of Achievement, and the
Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. In 2000
he received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the
Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by
Jefferson
Awards.
[12]
In 2008 the
White House awarded
Carson the
Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian
honor.
[13]
In 2010, he was elected into the
National
Academy of Sciences Institute of
Medicine.
[14]
Carson has been awarded 38 honorary doctorate degrees and dozens of
national merit citations.
[15]
Carson at the
Miami
Book Fair International, 1991
Carson has written six
bestselling[16]
books published by
Zondervan, an
international Christian media and publishing company:
Gifted
Hands,
Think Big,
The Big Picture,
Take the
Risk, and
America the Beautiful, and
One Nation.
The first book is an autobiography, and two are about his personal
philosophies of success that incorporate hard work and a faith in
God.
Carson’s book titled
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story was
released by
Zondervan in
1992.
[17]
A separate
television
movie with the
same
title premiered on
TNT on
February 7, 2009, with
Cuba Gooding
Jr. in the lead role and
Kimberly Elise
portraying his mother.
[18]
On July 8, 2013, Carson joined
The
Washington Times as a weekly opinion columnist, and also
writes for a digital magazine aimed at conservative
African-Americans, called
American
CurrentSee.
[19]
Political affiliation, activities and
views[edit]
Carson has said he is not a member of any
political party.
“If I were part of one, it would be called the Logic party, and it
would be dedicated to commonsense approaches we all should be able
to see.”
[20]
In his book
America the Beautiful, Carson explained why he
decided to get involved in politics: “I believe it is a very good
idea for physicians, scientists, engineers, and others trained to
make decisions based on facts and empirical data to get involved in
the political arena and help guide our
country.”
[21]
He also said, “we [physicians] should be concerned not only about
the health of individual patients, but also about the health of our
entire society.”
[22]
Although he has largely expressed conservative viewpoints, Carson
has also expressed some views at odds with most conservatives, such
as supporting banning
semi-automatic
weapons in large cities. He has also stated, “There’s a reason for
the Second Amendment; people do have the right to have
weapons.”
[23]
Criticism of health insurance
companies[edit]
In a 1996 Megadiversities interview, he said: 'The entire concept
of for profits for the insurance companies makes absolutely no
sense. 'I deny that you need care and I will make more money.' This
is totally ridiculous. The first thing we need to do is get rid of
for-profit insurance companies. We have a lack of policies and we
need to make the government responsible for catastrophic health
care.'
[24]
In 1992 Carson wrote 'The most natural question is, who will pay
for catastrophic health care? The answer: The government-run
catastrophic health care fund. Such a fund would be supported by a
mandatory contribution of 10 to 15 percent of the profits of each
health insurance company, including managed care
operations.
[25]
Affirmative action[edit]
In 1999 Carson wrote:
A lot of people, including myself, have benefitted from
affirmative action...and have, in fact, taken advantage of the
opportunity it afforded them. And I think that is the best possible
reason for advocating the continuation of some program that allows
minorities to have opportunities and improved access to mainstream
America.
I would love to hear people engage in a very different
conversation—on how we might maintain the benefits of affirmative
action but change it and even call it something else. We have to be
smart, you see. What I would like to call it is compassionate
action.[26]
Views on end of life
care[edit]
In 1992 Carson wrote: 'As our general population continues to age
and as our technical abilities continue to improve we will find
ourselves in a position of being able to keep most people
alive...well beyond their 100th birthday. The question is 'Should
we do it simply because we can? It is well known that up to half of
the medical expenses incurred in the average American's life are
incurred during the last six months of life....rather than putting
them in an intensive care unit, poking and prodding them, operating
and testing them ad nauseam, why not allow them the dignity of
dying in comfort, at home, with an attendant if
necessary?...Decisions on who should be treated and who should not
be treated would clearly require some national guidelines.
[27]
Speech at National Prayer Breakfast addressing social and
fiscal issues[edit]
Carson was the keynote speaker at the February 7, 2013,
National
Prayer Breakfast.
[28]
During his speech, Carson commented on several social and fiscal
issues including political correctness, education, the national
debt, health care, and taxation. On
political
correctness, Carson remarked: “PC is dangerous, because you
see, this country, one of the founding principles was freedom of
thought and freedom of expression. And it [PC] muffles people. It
puts a muzzle on them.” On education, he compared current
graduation rates with those 200 years ago: “In 1831,
Alexis de
Tocqueville came to our country
... anybody finishing
the second grade was completely literate.” About healthcare:
“Here’s my solution. When a person is born, give him a birth
certificate, an
electronic
medical record, and a health savings account, to which money
can be contributed, pretax from the time you are born, to the time
you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members.”
Carson spoke favorably of the
flat tax system, which
he prefers to call the Proportional Tax based on the biblical
principle of the
tithe.
[29]
The speech was magnified because Carson’s views were generally
interpreted to be
politically conservative, and President
Barack Obama
was sitting 10 feet away. Conservative commentators from
Rush Limbaugh to
Sean Hannity and
Neil Cavuto of
Fox News praised the
speech as speaking “truth to power.”
The Wall
Street Journal had an op-ed titled “Ben Carson for
President,” which stated that Carson “may not be politically
correct, but he's closer to correct than we've heard in years.”
Columnist
Star Parker wrote in
a column that “Ben Carson owes no apology for honest
talk.”
[30]
Fox News contributor
Cal Thomas, however,
opined that Carson’s remarks were inappropriate for the event and
that he should apologize to President
Obama.
[31]
Fox News pundit
Bob Beckel also found
Carson’s remarks inappropriate for the event, calling them “extreme
right-wing talking points.”
[32]
At White House in 2008 for award
In an interview with Neil Cavuto, Carson defended himself by
saying, “Somebody has to be courageous enough to stand up to the
bullies.”
[33]
Carson appeared on the Fox News program
Hannity on Friday,
February 8, and was asked about a possible run for the White House.
Carson responded: “If the Lord grabbed me by the collar and made me
do it, I would.”
[34]
After the National Prayer Breakfast speech, Carson told ABC News:
“I don't think it was particularly political.... You know, I'm a
physician. I like to diagnose things. And, you know, I’ve diagnosed
some pretty, pretty significant issues that I think a lot of people
resonate with.”
[35]
Regarding the policies of President Obama, he said: “There are a
number of policies that I don’t believe lead to the growth of our
nation and don't lead to the elevation of our nation. I don’t want
to sit here and say all of his policies are bad. What I would like
to see more often in this nation is an open and intelligent
conversation, not people just casting aspersions at each
other.”
Writing in
National
Review,
Jonah Goldberg
compared Carson to legendary African American leader
Booker T.
Washington.
[36]
Meanwhile, in
The Atlantic,
David Graham compared Carson to
Herman Cain without
the 'personal skeletons.'
[37]
Following his sudden popularity among conservatives, Carson was a
featured speaker at the annual
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 16,
2013, and finished tied for seventh in the Washington Times/CPAC
2013 Straw Poll with 4 percent of the 3,000 ballots
cast.
[38][39]
In the 2014 CPAC straw poll, he performed even better, coming in
third place with 9 percent, behind
senators
Ted Cruz of
Texas (with
11%) and
Rand Paul of
Kentucky (with
31%).
[40]
Carson has also had a strong showing in the polls at the most
recent
Values Voter
Summits in 2013 and 2014. In that group's 2013 presidential
straw poll, he tied with former
Pennsylvania
senator
Rick Santorum for
second with 13%, behind Ted Cruz's 42%. In the following poll a
year later, Carson closed the gap with Cruz by taking 20% to Cruz's
25%. In the same group's vice presidential poll that same year,
Carson came in first with 22%, ahead of Cruz's
14%.
[41][42]
Views on marriage and
evolution[edit]
Carson described his opposition to
same-sex marriage on
Hannity, saying:
“Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be
they
NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t
matter what they are. They don't get to change the
definition.”
[43]
Carson’s comments drew criticism for equating gays with pedophiles
and practitioners of bestiality. A group of
Hopkins
students circulated a petition asking that Carson be replaced as
the university’s commencement
speaker.
[43][44]
Carson told
MSNBC’s
Andrea Mitchell
that his comments were “completely taken out of context and
completely misunderstood,” and also asserted on
CNN’s '
The Situation
Room” that he loves all people, whether gay or
straight.
[43]
Carson withdrew as Hopkins’s commencement speaker and apologized
for the remarks, saying that “the examples were not the best choice
of words, and I certainly apologize if I offended anyone,” adding
that the Bible “says we have an obligation to love our fellow man
as ourselves, and I love everybody the same—all
homosexuals.”
[44][45]
Carson also said, “I certainly believe gay people should have all
the rights anyone else has. I was trying to say that as far as
marriage was concerned, it has traditionally been between a man and
a woman and no one should be able to change
that.”
[46]
Carson’s views on
evolution and
creationism have
also generated controversy.
[47]
In a 2006 debate with
Richard Dawkins,
Francis
Collins, and
Daniel Dennett,
Carson stated: “I don’t believe in evolution
.... I simply
don’t have enough faith to believe that something as complex as our
ability to rationalize, think, and plan, and have a moral sense of
what’s right and wrong, just
appeared.”
[48]
In 2012 nearly 500 professors, students, and alumni of
Emory
University wrote a letter expressing concern about Carson’s
views in advance of his commencement speech, although no request
was made to rescind Carson’s invitation. In particular, they cited
his quote in an
Adventist
Review interview where he said, “By believing we are the
product of random acts, we eliminate morality and the basis of
ethical behavior.” Carson responded by clarifying his views,
saying, “People who believe in survival of the fittest might have
more difficulty deriving where their ethics come from. A lot of
evolutionists are very ethical
people.”
[47]
Criticism of
ObamaCare[edit]
On October 11, 2013, Carson spoke at the conservative
Values Voters
Summit in Washington, D.C., where he called the
Affordable Care
Act (ACA) “the worst thing that has happened in this nation
since slavery.” In his speech, Carson claimed that the entire push
for the legislation originated with
Vladimir Lenin
and quoted Lenin as saying that “socialized medicine is the
keystone to the establishment of a socialist
state.”
[49]
Lenin did not actually say this, although the purported quote
appears on a number of conservative
websites.
[50][51]
After being criticized for his comments, Carson wrote a
Washington
Times column on October 15 denying that he was “equating
Obamacare with slavery” and criticizing the “PC police” for
attempting “to discredit and ... silence” him. Carson also
acknowledged that there was controversy over whether Lenin used the
“exact words” quoted and said that “the larger point is that
[Lenin] and his followers certainly subscribed to the philosophy
symbolized by these words.”
[52]
During the White House Prayer Breakfast, Carson commented on the
ACA:
We’ve already started down the path to solving one of
the other big problems, health care. We need to have good health
care for everybody. It’s the most important thing that a person can
have. Money means nothing, titles mean nothing when you don’t have
your health, but we’ve got to figure out efficient ways to do it.
We spend a lot of money on health care, twice as much per capita as
anybody in else in the world, and yet not very efficient. What can
we do?
Here’s my solution. When a person is born, give him a birth
certificate, an electronic medical record and a health savings
account [HSA].'[53]
2016 presidential draft
effort[edit]
Carson’s rise in the conservative movement and talks of a possible
presidential run in
2016 have inspired a national movement to draft Carson for a
presidential run for the
Republican nomination, employing the catchphrase “Run, Ben,
Run.”
[54]
The official organization is called the National Draft Ben Carson
for President Committee, founded by John Philip Sousa IV (a great
grandson of
John Philip
Sousa). The movement has been following Carson’s activities and
presidential ambitions, and citing his performance in major polls
of conservative candidates, particularly an online poll in February
2014 of 62,000 conservative activists, where Carson came in third
with 77% in a series of different match-ups (behind Rand Paul’s 80%
and Ted Cruz’s 84%).
[55]
It has also served as the primary fundraiser for a potential
campaign, with Sousa reporting on April 12 that the movement had
raised over $4 million, and that a potential campaign apparatus,
from television ads to mailing lists, had already been set
up.
[56]
In an interview with
The Weekly
Standard in May 2014, Carson said that he was “warming up
to the idea” of a presidential run, owing to people everywhere
telling him that he should run, saying, “Because every place I go,
it’s unbelievable ... and so I think I’m starting to hear
something.”
[57][58]
In mid and late June of 2014, Carson appeared in his first national
poll for the 2016 presidential election through
Rasmussen. In a
hypothetical match-up against
Hillary Clinton,
Carson tied with Rand Paul for the strongest showing out of any
potential Republican nominee, trailing Clinton by only
7%.
[59]
At the end of June 2014, the Draft Committee reported that it had
raised over $7 million from 91,000
donors.
[60]
On August 2, 2014, it was reported that Carson had officially
approved the formation of his own
Political
Action Committee, named One Nation, and also appointed Texas
businessman Terry Giles as chairman of a potential presidential
campaign. Carson suggested that his final decision on whether or
not to run will depend on the results of the
2014 midterms, and whether or not the Republicans will regain
control of the
U.S. Senate. This
announcement came shortly after Sousa reported that the draft
committee had raised yet another $1 million, resulting in $8
million raised overall.
[61][62]
On August 25, Carson won a large majority of the vote in the Iowa
Polk County Straw Poll, with 62%; the next-highest candidate, Ted
Cruz, won only 7%.
[63]
When interviewed by radio host
Hugh Hewitt in late
September of 2014, Carson said 'the likelihood is strong' that he
would run for president, and that he would make a formal
announcement 'before May of next
year.'
[64]
Carson Scholars Fund[edit]
Carson and his wife started the Carson Scholars Fund in 1994. It
gives scholarships to students in grades 4–11 for “academic
excellence and humanitarian qualities.” The fund began after they
read a research study saying that out of 22 countries, the United
States was next to last at No. 21 regarding science and math. Also,
they noticed that many school display cases contained trophies
rewarding the success of their sports teams, “while honor students
only received a pin or certificate.” Those who succeed are given “a
$1,000 scholarship to be invested toward their college education,
along with a recognition package, and an invitation to attend an
awards banquet.” The fund reports “five thousand seven hundred
scholarships and counting.”
[65][66]
Personal life[edit]
Carson and his wife, Lacena “Candy” Rustin, met in 1971 as students
at
Yale University.
They married in 1975 and have three sons: Ben Jr., Rhoeyce, and
Murray. They live in
West
Friendship, Maryland and are members of the
Seventh-day
Adventist Church.
[67][68]