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Congressional Gold Medal Awarded to Distinguished Doctor
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ShareApril 23, 2008 3:14 PM
ABC News' Jennifer Duck Reports: President Bush and leaders of Congress awarded Dr. Michael Ellis DeBakey with the Congressional Gold Medal for his distinguished career as a surgeon, innovator, and medical educator. DeBakey was previously awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1969 by another Texas president, President Lyndon Johnson.
The 99-year-old doctor, who turns 100 years old in September, sat in his wheelchair smiling as Speaker Pelosi and President Bush handed him the Gold Medal. He spoke into a microphone with a shaking hand saying, "Again, let me come back to my sense of gratitude and because of my sense of high treasure I have for my citizenship, since receiving this award, my cup runneth over."
But along with the gratitude, DeBakey had a few recommendations and criticisms for Congress on the state of health care.
"Now, I want to make a suggestion to the Congress about health care," DeBakey said as the crowd chuckled. "So I know that you have sought a better health care program for the needy. And, unfortunately, it's been elusive. But there is a model that you should look at that I'm thoroughly familiar with because, when I was in the military, I was assigned by the surgeon general to the committee that Bradley and Hawley worked on in fixing up the Veterans Administration."
DeBakey was the pioneer of heart bypass surgery and several heart devices. He also is credited for developing mobile surgical hospitals or MASH units. Additionally, just twelve years ago he was called to Moscow to help with President Boris Yeltsin's quintuple bypass. In all, he's operated on more than 60-thousand people.
"Dr. DeBakey has an impressive resume, but his truest legacy is not inscribed on a medal or etched into stone. It is written on the human heart," President Bush said in the Capitol Rotunda. "His legacy is the unlost hours with family and friends who are still with us because of his healing touch. His legacy is grandparents who lived to see their grandchildren. His legacy is holding the fragile and sacred gift of human life in his hands -- and returning it unbroken."
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, "At age 99, he makes history again as the oldest survivor of his own operation. In 2006 he successfully underwent surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm."
Speaker Pelosi pointed out that DeBakey's mother taught him to sew at a young age hence helping him grow to be a great surgeon.
"Did you know that, when Dr. DeBakey was a little boy, his mother taught him how to sew? How lucky for all of us," said Pelosi. "She could not have imagined then that the little hands of her little boy would become some of the finest surgical instruments the world had ever known."
April 23, 2008 in Vote 2008: Democrats | Permalink | User Comments (1)
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Well? What was it?
"So I know that you have sought a better health care program for the needy. And, unfortunately, it's been elusive. But there is a model that you should look at that I'm thoroughly familiar with because, when I was in the military, I was assigned by the surgeon general to the committee that Bradley and Hawley worked on in fixing up the Veterans Administration."
Posted by: Where's the rest of the story? | Apr 23, 2008 5:49:05 PM
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