(This is the first part of a three part series that anecdotally explores the fundamental question of whether science is an adequate tool/system /conduit to arriving at truth)
That was
Lynne McTaggart the American investigative journalist and author of “The
Field” quoting Joan Didion during an interview with movie director Tom
Shadyac (Ace Ventura, Liar Liar etc.) for his 2010 documentary “I am”
in which he attempts to figure out what is wrong with this world and what we
can do about it.
As I
finished watching that excellent documentary in Phlladelphia in 2012, my mind
went back 11 years, to 2001, 9/11, anthrax and a frosty December day in Flint,
Michigan. On that day, Dr. Kim Thet Oo, a doctor from Bhurma, proved the truth
of Ms. McTaggart’s statement to me. Much
in the news today because of the Rohingya massacres, the protracted pogroms by Burmese
Buddhists against Burmese Buddhists over decades in the longest ongoing
conflict in the world went completely under our radar. Dr.Kim lived through
that, and, as a Buddhist and humanist, didn’t care what race, cast or creed he
treated. This is his story my friends, and I share this with the hope that you
will smile, as I did, so many years ago.
I had taken
a Greyhound from Ann Arbor to Flint to meet my Theravada Buddhist friends Ken
and Visakha Kawasaki to help them set up the Buddhist Relief Mission and
Burmese Relief Fund websites when I met Dr. Kim for the first time.
Having
joined the 8888 uprising in Burma he fled the Junta in 1990 just months before
graduation. He lived the next eleven years in the jungles along the
Thai-Burmese border. The Kawasakis had somehow managed to get him and his
family out of there and over to America. He had arrived in Flint just a few
months before my visit. As you will find out, he was already accomplished in
many ways – including driving on American highways.
We talked. Chuckling
over the reason why only Sri Lankan and
Burmese people can eat rice with the tips of their fingers. Clucking in disgust
at the way Therawada ritual had almost killed off Therawada practice in our two
countries. Skimming, inevitably, through various conflicts across the world
from Peru to the Philippines.
Hesitantly, I also asked him about his experiences in Burma. In
response, he described an interview with a breathless young thang from the
local newspaper in Flint. So vivid and detailed was his description of it that
I felt almost as if I were there so I am reproducing my notes from the
perspective of a fly- on-the-wall.
Breathless Young
Thang (BYT): You were
exiled before graduation.
Doctor Kim
Thet Oo: (smiles)
Yes. I graduated in the jungle.
BYT: What?
Kim: There was
no one else in the jungle with medical experience. Just me. My practice
stretched 1000 miles. I tended thousands of Burmese homeless. Many sick. Burmese and Thai authorities were
hounding and pounding them. Do you know any American doctor with such a
practice?
BYT: (blinks) er…no, I guess not.. er…we
had some of that terror during 9/11.
Kim: Yes. I am sad. Many people died without knowing why.
BYT: Nothing can
compare to that.
Kim: (mildly)
There are situations that compare.
BYT: (looks
blankly at Kim)
Kim: You experienced 9/11 once, I
dealt with it five or six times a year for eleven years.
BYT: (Gapes) huh?
Kim: (smiles) I was joking.
BYT: (relief)
Kim: Definitely it wasn’t more
than three times a year.
Breathless
young thang wisely decides to change tack.
BYT: There has been much worry in the
USA about Anthrax.
Kim: Yes, I feel sorry for those medical
people. They are in great fear.
BYT: I think, surely, anybody would
be terrified?
Kim: That depends.
BYT: (laughs) You aren’t?
Kim: In the
jungle, I did not have those protective suits I saw the doctors wearing on TV. Jungle
doctors cannot afford fear.
At a loss for words, BYT stops. She smiles weakly around the room,
wishing she were somewhere else. But she had this darned interview to do. She
steels herself, takes a deep breath and asks the next question.
BYT: (carefully) You…you mean you
treated anthrax cases in the jungles?
Kim: Of course.
BYT: Without protection?
Kim: Yes.
BYT: (Incredulous) Can’t have been many cases or
you would not be here.
Kim: (shrugs) You are right. I am
lucky. I did not treat more than four or five a month.
Poor BYT.
She just gave up. Wanting an interview she walked into a reality show. Not just
any old reality TV but something that literally and figuratively broadsided everything
she had ever been taught about life and science. If I had been there, I would have seen Dr.
Kim watch, with deep concern, as she walked a bit unsteadily out the door and I
would have heard him mumble, “She doesn’t know…she cannot know… she will never
know”.
He drove me
back from Flint to Ann Arbor. He was studying to get a license to practice in
America and I asked him how that was going. He said it was tough.
“Language?”
I queried. He shook his head.
“No. My
problem is trying to find the answers they expect from me”.
What do you
mean?
“They ask
these various questions you know. Like about some procedure maybe say like
setting broken bones”.
So…?
“So, yes…”
he said, swishing past a few vehicles Asian style.
“… there
is a correct answer in medical science but I also discovered about 50 other far
better methods. But medical science has never heard of those. Because medical
science did not have to practice medicine in a bamboo hut with no drugs, no
nurses, no equipment. The only thing I had was my will to somehow cure the patient. But
American medical exams do not know how to ask about such things so it is
difficult for me.
We were
silent for a couple of highway miles and then Dr. Kim said something that changed
my view of science forever.
“I learned something in the jungle. Desperate
desire to heal is a far better weapon against disease than science”.
Something
clicked on in me at that moment that has never been unclicked. It is this: Science,
despite how big a story it is, despite its laudable successes, is a very
limited tool, and, because of its structure, it can never be anything more than a limited tool. More
seriously though, I realized that it was also a limiting tool.
“Dr.Kim”
I said. “I really don’t know if I should sympathize with you or be jealous
of you”.
“Neither.
I am human. And, humans do what they must, not only what they can. I not
only had to provide medicine, but also food and shelter since my patients did
not have those either. No point giving them any sort of medicine if they died
of starvation or exposure. My hospital hut was also a hostel and a hotel. I
cooked. I cleaned. I doctored. We ate this really heavy rice because we never
knew when our next meal was going to be”.
As we barreled
down that American highway I thought to myself that at that very moment, similar
miracles were probably happening in the north of Sri Lanka. That thought, contrarily,
served only to depress me. So I thought about his family instead.
Warm,
inviting and never out of a hot meal for the hungry because Asian hospitality is
always ready for the uninvited guest. He had three lovely daughters. One was
around twelve and the others around five or six years of age. That got me
thinking that he must have got married while still a student in Burma and I
asked him about it. He said in his usual quiet voice, “We have been married
eight years now. We met in the jungle”.
I glanced up
sharply but he had anticipated my question “My oldest was two and dying of diarrhea
when her mother brought her to me. She
didn’t expect the child to live. Neither did I. I fought for her life but it
was hopeless. I was exhausted. I slept. The mother disappeared in the night
thinking the child would be dead by morning. But she survived. Somehow she
survived. Not because of me. Not because of medicine. She is my daughter now. She rode to America on my back”.
I smiled
then. I am still smiling. Ten such and this earth will be a worthwhile place to
inhabit. In the darkest places on this planet, where the worst qualities of
human beings are seen, there, I firmly believe, are to be found the finest as
well.
In people who see beyond their noses. Who feel beyond their hearts. Who prove that
science is just a story. Join me people
and say "Thank you Doctor Kim for being around"
