Ben Carson

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Ben Carson (2017)

Benjamin Solomon "Ben" Carson, Sr. (born September 18, 1951 in Detroit , Michigan ) is an American politician , retired neurosurgeon , author and conservative political commentator. He became known through the separation operations of Siamese twins . He has been Minister for Housing and Urban Development in the Trump Cabinet since March 2, 2017 , after he ran for the Republican nomination for the 2016 US presidential election .

origin

Ben Carson comes from a Detroit ghetto . When he was eight, his parents divorced. From then on, his mother Sonya Carson, who had long suffered from depression , raised him and his brother alone. His mother, who had only attended school for only three years, sent him weekly to the library to improve his academic performance and, looking back, the professed Seventh-day Adventist confessed that God and his mother's love gave him support and impetus in life gifts. Ben Carson lives with his wife, Candy Carson, their three sons and their mother.

Medical career

Carson completed a 1973 Psychology -Studies at Yale University and then moved to study at the Medical Faculty of the University of Michigan , which he finished 1,977th He then took part in a training program as an assistant doctor in neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital . In 1984 he was elected chief neurosurgery officer at the Johns Hopkins Clinic. This made him the youngest head physician in the USA. He ended his medical career in 2013.

Ben Carson is best known for his separation operations on Siamese twins .

On June 19, 2008, Ben Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush at the White House .

Carson first separated Siamese twins in 1987 at Johns Hopkins Hospital . Benjamin and Patrick Binder from Ulm had grown together on the head (craniopagus) and survived the operation, but were mentally disabled afterwards.

He performed the next separation operation in 1994 in Pretoria, South Africa, on the nine-month-old girls Mahlatse and Nthabiseng Makwaeba. Nthabiseng died of heart failure a few hours after the twenty-hour operation, Mahlatse died of kidney failure a day later. As it turned out, the twins , who had also grown together at the head, lived symbiotically , but because of their state of health they had no joint chance of survival without the operation.

In 1997, in the same hospital in Pretoria, he directed the separation operation for the Zambian brothers Joseph and Luka Banda. The eleven-month-old children were the first craniopagus twins with opposing gazes to survive the operation without mental disabilities.

In 2003, Carson was part of the team that was supposed to separate the 29-year-old Iranian twins Ladan and Laleh Bijani in Singapore. The operation was considered risky by the adult patients, and ultimately both sisters died of blood loss during the 50-hour operation.

In September 2004 he led the separation operation for Lea and Tabea Block from Lemgo at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Tabea died in the 30-hour operation, her sister was almost blind at times, but can lead a normal life to a limited extent.

In addition to his work as a neurosurgeon, Ben Carson published six books for the international Christian media group Zondervan, which belongs to the American publisher HarperCollins . In mid-2013 he gave up his work as a neurosurgeon; since then he has appeared as a speaker and commentator for conservative groups and media outlets such as Fox News .

politics

Candidate for the 2016 American presidential election

August 2015: Carson signs autographs on a campaign tour in New Hampshire

At the end of July 2014, Ben Carson announced that he would run as a candidate for the Republican Party in the 2016 US presidential election.

Ben Carson takes extremely controversial positions. He denies the scientific consensus ( climatology ) that the increased concentration of greenhouse gases released by humans into the earth's atmosphere is very likely to be the most important cause of global warming . Ben Carson is also in favor of the abolition of Medicare , a social security program that provides health insurance for 49 million US seniors. He rejects the equation of homosexual partnerships with heterosexual marriage and compared homosexuals with pedophiles in this context . In October 2015, he caused a stir when he claimed that strict gun control laws had favored the Holocaust. In November he claimed that the Egyptian pyramids were not the tombs of the pharaohs, but the biblical granaries that Joseph built .

Despite (or because of) his extreme positions and due to the mood of the Republican party base, which currently favors political career changers over experienced officials, Carson managed to almost consistently take second place in party polls from the beginning of September 2015. He overtook prominent Republicans such as Jeb Bush , Chris Christie and Rand Paul . Only the billion dollar real estate entrepreneur Donald Trump ranked ahead of Carson in polls during the late summer of 2015 , who gained a lot of approval mainly due to his media presence and his appearance against the political establishment. In a joint survey by TV station CBS News and The New York Times , Carson was even four percentage points ahead of Trump at the end of October. However, other surveys from the same week showed the entrepreneur, in some cases a clear double-digit lead. At the beginning of November, Carson succeeded for the first time in the survey aggregation of the website RealClearPolitics just past Trump to the first place of the Republican applicants. A few days later, Trump narrowly pushed him back from the top position. According to polls published by the Huffington Post , Carson had aggregated around 20 percent of the Republican voters polled by mid-November. This puts him in second place after Trump (28 percent). All of the other 15 candidates were at least seven percentage points behind Carson.

In the run-up to the third Republican television debate at the end of October, Carson threatened to stay away unless the format was limited to two hours instead of the planned three hours. Previously, the second (three-hour) debate had come under public criticism as being too lengthy. The initiative to threaten a boycott came from Donald Trump, who accused the broadcaster CNBC of wanting to generate more advertising revenue through longer broadcasting times. At Trump's request, Carson joined the boycott threat. CNBC then gave in to pressure from the two top polling applicants. Carson was the top Republican candidate fundraiser for several months .

Carson suffered a setback in his campaign in November 2015 when it was discovered that he had not received a full scholarship from West Point , as he claimed in his biographies. By the end of 2015, Carson fell in polls behind Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to fourth place for the Republican top candidate. At the same time, he split from several of his extremely successful fundraisers and campaign managers, although the reasons initially remained unclear.

After Carson's election campaign worker was killed in a traffic accident in mid-January 2016 and three others were seriously injured, he suspended his active campaign for a few days out of respect for the bereaved.

Ben Carson at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in March 2016

In an interview at the end of February, Carson indicated that he had separated from his fundraisers because there was suspicion that they had designed the campaign in such a way that companies they founded themselves or those in which family members were involved benefited. Carson's team had raised massive campaign donations, but spent them disproportionately on fundraising. The managers used expensive methods such as direct mailing and telemarketing and hired companies in which they or family members were involved. "We had people who didn't seem to understand finances," Carson told CNN in February, "or maybe they did it on purpose."

In doing so, he admitted the possibility, which had been discussed by the media for months, that Carson's election campaign was designed as a scam. On March 5, 2016, he ended his election campaign.

Role in the election campaign for Donald Trump

On March 11, 2016, a few days after his departure, Carson announced his support for Donald Trump in the further election campaign. During a joint press conference, Trump also stated that Carson should join his campaign team as an advisor on health and education policy. At the beginning of May, after all the other candidates gave up their candidacy and Trump was de facto established as the Republican presidential candidate, Carson temporarily took over the lead in the search for a suitable candidate for the office of vice president . Since Trump announced that he would prefer a candidate with political experience, Carson himself was not considered a candidate for this post. However, Trump hinted that the retired doctor could play a role in a possible Trump administration. A few days after the election victory, Carson phoned journalist Armstrong Williams and had him publish:

“Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency. "

"Dr. Carson believes he has no government experience, he never ran a federal agency. The last thing he wants to do is hold a position that could harm the presidency ”

Minister in the Trump Cabinet

On December 5, 2016, the then- elected US President Donald Trump nominated Carson for the office of Minister of Housing in his cabinet after he had spoken to him for the position a few weeks earlier. He was ratified by the US Senate on March 2, 2017 and took office on the same day.

Awards

reception

Carson's life so far was filmed in 2009 with Cuba Gooding junior in the lead role. The film " Gifted Hands - The Ben Carson Story " is based on his biography.

Publications

Web links

Commons : Ben Carson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Sonja Kastilan: Gifted hands. In: The world . September 20, 2004, accessed November 4, 2012 .
  2. ↑ a b c Benjamin Carson: The man who separated Lea and Tabea. In: Stern.de . September 22, 2004, accessed November 4, 2012 .
  3. ↑ achievement.org ( Memento of the original from November 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.achievement.org
  4. ↑ Jonathan Bor: Joined twins shared more than artery to brain. In: The Baltimore Sun . June 30, 1994, accessed November 4, 2012 .
  5. ^ Claudia Dreifus : A conversation with: Benjamin S. Carson; A Pioneer at a Frontier: The Brain of a Child. In: The New York Times . January 4, 2000, accessed November 4, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Thomas Wolff: Dr. Risk . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . 16, Volume 65, January 20, 2009, p. 48 ( fr-online.de ).
  7. ^ Family Block: Tabea & Lea. Retrieved November 4, 2012 .
  8. ^ Aaron Blake: Ben Carson announces retirement, feeds presidential speculation. In: Washington Post. March 16, 2013, accessed November 13, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Ben Carson on Running for President, 'It Is a Step Closer,' Newsmax, July 28, 2014
  10. ^ Tomas Monzon: Gov. Jerry Brown sends climate change report to presidential candidate Ben Carson. In: UPI . September 12, 2015, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Kyle Cheney, Jason Millman: Dr. Ben Carson's prescription: Abolish Medicare. In: Politico . October 22, 2015, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  12. ^ Breanna Edwards: Carson: 'I apologize' for gay remark. In: Politico. March 29, 2013, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Andreas Ross: Presidential candidate in America: "If Jews had had weapons, the Holocaust would not have happened like this". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Online. October 9, 2015, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  14. ^ Nathan McDermott, Andrew Kaczynski, Ben Carson: Egyptian Pyramids Built For Grain Storage, Not By Aliens Or As Tombs. In: BuzzFeed . November 5, 2015, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Republican presidential nomination , Real Clear Politics, Current Polls (English)
  16. ↑ Poll: Donald Trump and Ben Carson increase lead over Jeb Bush , CBS-News, October 19, 2015 (English)
  17. ↑ Poll results in the US primary campaign: Ben Carson overtakes Trump . In: Spiegel Online . October 27, 2015 ( online [accessed October 27, 2015]).
  18. ↑ 2016 Republican Presidential Nomination. In: RealClearPolitics. accessed on November 4, 2015. See also Philip Bump: Donald Trump Led the Polls for 107 Straight Days. Until Today. In: The Washington Post . November 4, 2015 (English).
  19. ↑ 2016 National Republican Primary , HuffPost Politics, November 14, 2015 (English)
  20. ↑ Ben Kamisar, Bradford Richardson: Trump, Carson threaten to boycott next GOP debate. In: The Hill . October 15, 2015, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  21. ↑ Chris Cillizza: Ben Carson didn't get a 'full scholarship' from West Point. That's a big problem for his campaign. In: Washington Post . November 6, 2015, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  22. ^ David A. Graham: The Carson Campaign's Year-End Collapse. In: The Atlantic . December 31, 2015, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  23. ^ Shaquille Brewster: Ben Carson to Resume Campaign After Volunteer's Death. In: NBC News Online. January 20, 2016, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  24. ^ A b David A. Graham: Does Ben Carson Suspect His Campaign Was a Scam? In: The Atlantic. February 24, 2016, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  25. ↑ US Republican primary campaign: Ben Carson gives up. In: n-tv . March 5, 2016, accessed March 5, 2016 . n-tv.de
  26. ↑ Axel Postinett: Ben Carson gives up. In: Handelsblatt . March 5, 2016, accessed March 5, 2016 .
  27. ↑ Carson speaks out for Trump , zeit.de, March 11, 2015.
  28. ↑ Donald Trump: Ben Carson May Help Pick VP , USNews, May 4, 2016 (English)
  29. ↑ Quoted in The Hill
  30. ↑ Kim Bellware: Ben Carson Considering Housing And Urban Development Secretary. In: The Huffington Post , November 23, 2016.
  31. ^ Andrew Harnik: Ben Carson sworn in as Housing and Urban Development secretary. In: CBS News , March 2, 2017 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Carson, Ben
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carson, Benjamin Solomon (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American neurosurgeon and politician (Republican)
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit , Michigan