There is an incredibly interesting and moving first-person article in the current New England Journal of Medicine. It’s called “Terra Firma — A Journey from Migrant Farm Labor to Neurosurgery,” by Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa,
who is the director of the brain-tumor stem-cell laboratory at the
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He came to the U.S. illegally from
Mexico in the mid-1980’s, as a teenage migrant worker who didn’t speak
English. Through a long series of hard jobs, accidents, inspiration,
and mentorship, he wound up attending Berkeley and then Harvard Medical
School. It isn’t a long article; go read it, now.
Even though it is pretty much a fool’s game to make predictions, I will go ahead and make a couple here:
1. Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa’s story will be invoked in the current
Presidential campaign by a candidate — or many candidates? — arguing
for immigration reform. And don’t be surprised to see him attend a
State of the Union address someday as a special guest, invited by the
President.
2. If it hasn’t happened already, Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa will get
calls from book publishers begging him to put his story between hard
covers. If his brief NEJM account is at all indicative of the book he would write, I surely hope he accepts.
