I first came across the “Heartbreaking News” of my death on a YouTube video. A suspiciously artificial-sounding voice reported that I had passed away on October 6 due to complications from stomach cancer. Hmm, that’s news to me, I thought, recalling the misquote attributed to Mark Twain: “The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.”
Listening further, I learned that my family members and colleagues had noticed a visible decline in my physical condition. I appeared weakened and found it increasingly difficult to walk—“an alarming change for someone who had once been so active and vibrant.” Nevertheless, I determined to continue my work until I finally succumbed to the illness that I had been battling quietly and with great dignity.
Three days after my reported death, my family and friends gathered for an intimate funeral service, held in a serene location that reflected my love for simplicity and spirituality. Hundreds of mourners attended, many of whom had worked closely with me throughout my career. The atmosphere was one of solemn reverence as speakers took to the podium to share personal stories and quotes from my writings. My, how encouraging. Too bad I missed it.
If you are reading this, I assure you that I am alive and well. I have no clue why someone would bother fabricating such a tale. My assistant tracked its origin to Vietnam, where an artificial intelligence program must have mined the internet to concoct a news report that got most facts right (my age, my birthplace, my education) but missed the most important fact of all: I am not dead! To update Mark Twain’s quote, the accuracy of AI has also been grossly exaggerated.
Ironically, I first encountered the false report of my death in a hospital, where I had just undergone surgery for prostate cancer, the most common cancer afflicting men. My wife and I spent a full week at a family lodge on the grounds of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinic in Bethesda, Maryland. The surgery was successful, and I am recovering on pace at home in Colorado.
Pain has a peculiar ability to shrink perspective. That is its purpose, of course: to force us to pay urgent attention to a part of the body in peril. During our week at NIH, political candidates were slandering each other on TV ads and war raged in places such as Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan. We shared a kitchen with patients from a number of countries, yet I heard very little conversation about politics or world events. Instead, we told each other our stories of suffering.
The NIH specializes in rare diseases. A farmer’s wife from Colorado said that so far only two people—she and her California sister—have been discovered with a particular gene defect that affects kidneys. She came to look after her sister, who has already lost one kidney and cannot tolerate a kidney transplant. Surgeons will attempt to remove eight small tumors on the remaining kidney in hopes of saving it.
A shy young Mongolian woman explained in broken English that her doctor in Chicago had referred her to NIH because of a different kidney problem. She introduced us to her sister, who had just flown in from Mongolia and spoke no English. Whereas most of us warmed up soup in a microwave oven, the sister cooked three fresh meals a day for the two of them. We nodded and smiled each time we saw her tending to her aromatic concoctions on the stove, and only in our final day did we learn that she had passed the transplant compatibility tests and would be donating one of her kidneys to her Chicago sister.
A couple from Pakistan had brought their 6-year-old son, who raised the decibel level in the kitchen and left Legos and toys all over the room. He tried out a few English phrases—“Hello, how are you?”—but listened to no one but his father, a soft-spoken man in a wheelchair. Doctors in Pakistan had ruled the father’s degenerative condition as incurable, and he came to NIH to help others, not himself. “Maybe they can learn something from my infirmity that will help someone else ten or twenty years from now,” he said.
A husband-and-wife physician team had driven up from Atlanta, along with their two children and a grandma for babysitting. They came to NIH as a last resort for the husband, who has a mysterious disease that no one can yet identify or figure out how to treat. NIH has identified 23 such diseases.
Listening to these stories, I felt undeserving to receive such expert care for a relatively common procedure like a prostatectomy. But NIH is constantly researching new treatment techniques, and has been a pioneer in robot-assisted surgery. Now, instead of making a long, open cut, the surgeon guides probes equipped with 3D cameras through six incisions, each barely an inch long, and directs the robotic arms to make cuts, cauterize bleeding, and remove cancerous tissue.
Until 2021 the NIH was led by Francis Collins, a remarkable scientist/physician who had earlier managed the Human Genome Project. Collins is outspoken about his Christian faith, as described in his books The Language of God and the just-released The Road to Wisdom. In his twelve years overseeing the NIH, he worked hard to create an ethos of both professional excellence and human compassion among his 20,000 employees. He set the standard, somehow earning praise from all five disparate presidents under whom he served: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
The tradition continues at the NIH. I met physicians and scientists at the top of their field, most of whom could make far more money employed by private hospitals or pharmaceutical companies. Unlike many health workers at profit-driven hospitals, they took time with me, explaining each procedure and answering my questions. When Dr. Collins visited my ward, he stopped and talked to each nurse’s aide and janitor. Before my surgery he gave me a tour of the hospital, pointing out the atrium where he led an impromptu worship service for the pastor Tim Keller, who spent some of his last months at NIH.
American companies and agencies such as NIH and CDC fund research and clinical trials that benefit the entire world. When a disease such as the Ebola virus, or HIV/AIDS, or COVID-19 appears on the scene, the world turns to the US for leadership in how to respond.
Yes, the US health care system is a mess. Yes, Americans get ripped off by Big Pharma, who charge us inordinately for drugs that cost far less in developing countries. Yes, budget-cutters question whether we should be escorting patients from Mongolia and Pakistan to the US at taxpayers’ expense. Instead of complaining, however, I left my time at NIH feeling grateful that some institutions in this country are still working smoothly and have higher motives than immediate self-interest.
We in the US can rightly take pride in being the first on the scene after global disasters, setting up food distribution sites and portable hospitals in tent cities. Global leadership involves “soft power” as much as military prominence. Sometimes magnanimity and generosity can accomplish more than a stockpile of weapons ever can. Ask Germany or Japan, our fiercest enemies in World War II, now among our staunchest allies.
Leave a Comment