Last Tuesday night Dave and I attended an Emory University event here in Orlando. Emory School of Medicine has produced some of our finest physicians, world wide. One of them is Cecil Wilson. Dr. Wilson and Emory president, James Wagner, shared a dialogue at the event. Dr. Wilson, said, in passing that he was "a man without flair." He could have been talking about being a soft spoken southern gentleman but my guess is that he was referring to being an internist rather than one of those glamour surgeons.
For instance, remember Alec Baldwin playing the surgeon in the movie Malice when he said..."You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something, I am God."
I can't imagine any circumstances under which Dr. Wilson would make this statement.
But he is, besides being a member of my church, president of the World Medical Association. So when he and Dr. Wagner dialogued about the importance of a liberal arts education combined with science, he knew what he was talking about. Not to mention the parts of the conversation about compromise, creativity and (the step sister of creativity) risk.
Dr. Wilson is all about medical ethics, world wide. He told us about a foreign medical school where the students were required to maintain a relationship with a family for several months. Not necessarily in a medical way, but get to know them as human beings.
When Cecil Wilson was sworn into to this new position last year at the General Assembly in Bangkok (after serving as the president of the American Medical Association,) he emphasized the major world wide threat of non-communicable deceases like diabetes, cancer and chronic lung disease, which can be largely controlled by lifestyle changes.
But Dr. Wilson is also concerned about climate control. Check out the YouTube video at "Climate Week NYC."
He said Tuesday night... I'm around people every day all over the world who are acting on their principles.
I would not contradict Dr. Wilson in any way - except that part about being a man without flair.
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