Medical School Scholarship Program

at the Latin American School of Medical Sciences, Havana, Cuba

'Yanqui go home,' with M.D.

The Indianapolis Star

February 6, 2005
By Dan Carpenter

Ever since he was a little boy putting in long waits to see a doctor who wasn't even a pediatrician, Lawrence "L.T." Jones has had a problem with how the world's richest country cares for the health of its poor folks.

Jones plans to be part of the solution, thanks to a huge gift to this country from a poor and put-down neighbor.

The 23-year-old from Gary is one of 88 Americans enrolled in the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, run by the Cuban government to supply doctors to needy areas in the Western Hemisphere and Africa.

Cuba? That hardscrabble island of repression? Turning Americans into physicians?

"I hope to get people to come see for themselves," Jones says. "I know the media accounts are absurd."

Media accounts generally reflect the views of Washington politicians and Miami expatriates, who have far less problem with far greater dictatorships than Fidel Castro's. Turn to such sources as the World Health Organization and the New England Journal of Medicine and you learn that Cuba's free medical training and free universal health care have added up to higher doctor-patient ratios and lower infant mortality and AIDS rates than nearly anywhere -- including the United States. Cuban physicians, paupers by for-profit standards, are honored all over the world -- "giants," Indiana's Jones says.

He decided to see for himself in 2001 after Rev. Lucius Walker spoke at Valparaiso University, where Jones was a junior and a scholarship football player. Head of a New York-based organization called Pastors for Peace which has delivered humanitarian aid to Cuba over U.S. government objections, Walker mentioned Castro's offer to open 500 slots in the 8,000-student medical school to Americans interested in serving deprived areas.

Jones had just over a B average and didn't have $250,000. American medical school seemed a long shot. He took a hiatus from Valpo, took pre-med courses and Spanish in Havana, and fell in love with the place. He's in residency now, laying hands on patients under expert supervision, and hopes in three years to hang his shingle.

To do so in his homeland, he must pass the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam and Clinical Skills Assessment test -- and hope politics doesn't slam doors. A travel ban, eased after congressional protests, nearly torpedoed his studies already; and he still fumes that "medical students trying to do good" were "punished by their own government."

Walker, eager to find takers for the rest of those 500 scholarships, hopes "to create a climate in which the people who ultimately make the decisions are not prejudiced." As to Castro's motives, the Baptist minister prefers to call it turning the other cheek. "After all these years of blockades, instead of being mean-spirited, we will educate your children in the finest traditions of our medical system."

Whatever its propaganda value might be, adds Fitzhugh Mullan, M.D., writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cuba's gesture shines a healthy spotlight on disparity in medical care and medical careers in America, where only 6 percent of doctors are non-white. "If Castro can find diamonds in our rough, we can too."

Enter L.T. Jones, African-American M.D. to be. He plans to practice pediatrics back home and use a Cuban revolutionary tool that grandparents will recognize. "My desire -- and this sounds ambitious for a 23-year-old -- is to change the face of medicine back to when there were house calls."

Carpenter is a Star op-ed columnist. Contact him at (317) 444-6172 or at dan.carpenter@indystar.com.