MovieChat Forums > Something the Lord Made (2004) Discussion > Just Another Example of How America Hide...

Just Another Example of How America Hides the Truth


I was unaware of these 2 men that came up with a procedure to help cure babies of a condition called Blue Baby,one man was an African American Named Vivien Thomas ,he never held a degree in medicine but was a major part of this medical breakthrough, but all the trials and tribulations as a Blackman that he had to go through, for him to maintain and achieve shows his strength. Both performaces were great ,Mos Def is showing that rappers can be actors and Alan Rickman(most famous for Hans Gruber of Die Hard)plays Alfred Blalock

this film with definatley make me do more research on this subject..................check out this film
YOU DONT HAVE TO BUMP THIS!BUT PLEASE RESPECT IT!

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[deleted]

You're an idiot, so America hides the truth? Maybe if you read a book every now and then, you won't need movies to educate you on any and everything in the world.

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first off no need for name calling!! second ,something as important as that was should have been public knowledge,like the first man in space ,no need to have to do initial research thats all I ment,to bad you dont believe america hides truths ,pity for you!!!
1-800-HOODLUM

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Came back to get an actor name and found this.

Guy, I've known all about Vivien Thomas and his work since I was maybe 8. It's simply a willingness to learn and a want to know more than what's presented to you without question. What Thomas did has been hailed for years. I fail to see how it's anyones faul but yours that you didn't know about it.

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Just wanted to say, appels_oranjes, that you are incredibly full of yourself. So you've known about Vivien Thomas since you were eight???? You sir, are a liar.

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No, Dwight, you're full of YOURself. How could you possibly KNOW for a fact that he DIDN'T know about Vivien Thomas? You're making an assumption because you obviously feel threatened by someone who had the gumption to get off his butt and learn something on his own without complaining about having it either forced down his throat or not having it handed to his entitled butt on a silver platter.

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Wow.... apparently they don't teach about this in school anymore... or they do and you guys just didn't pay attention... I learned about him when I was in 5th grade but what I didn't realize was what he had to go through.

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I really liked this movie because it showed how racist those yankees in Maryland are. Dr. Thomas receieved more racism in Maryland than he did in Tennessee. Which is quite evident in the movie where you hear a man say, "He couldn't have done that surgery without that n****r.". It's very refreshing to have an accurate portrayal of the way life was back then than to have it re-written like the rest of history to make northern people look like some great emancipators. When actually they are a lot more racist than they let on up north... past and present. It's a very sore spot to people like me who hear the hill billy and racist sterotype on Jay Leno and movies when I actually know more about racism and the Civil War than most yankees do. They don't teach yankee kids diddly about the Civil War but southern kids are taught very much about it. Then in some history books (written by yankees) they try to brain-wash children into being ashamed of being southern especially if you're white. They make you think that you're the scum of the earth and are white trash. But really southern people have a lot more class than yankees. We don't sleep with everyone we see like yankees do. We actually hang out with the black people we go to school and work with. Unlike yankees who would work beside a black person in a factory and never utter a word to them. I know this because a person from Illinois told me this is the way it is up there. Remember the Civil War had nothing to do with freeing black people. Most of the confederate soldiers were poor and of course didn't own slaves at all. So obviously it's not about slavery. Some people like to make us think that it was about slavery but it wasn't. I even remember a black friend of mine saying, "The Civil War was just about politics" in history class. Even though text books would try to tell him differently. I read a very interesting book called "The Real Lincoln". Look up "The Real Lincoln" and you'll find very interesting facts about Linclon and the Civil War. During the Civil War the yankees blamed the war on black people and were lynching and murdering black people left and right. Many black people moved up north looking for jobs after the Civil War and were treated worse than Irish people were back then. They did not find the relief of racism they were looking for back then. Go ahead and tell me I'm full of it. I saw this information at an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History and when the museum opens back up after construction you can see it for yourself!

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[deleted]

Quoted text: really liked this movie because it showed how racist those yankees in Maryland are.

As a point of information, Maryland is technically a southern state as it is south of the Mason-Dixon line. The legislature rejected secession but largely due to heavy Union army presence due to Washington DC.
The state song of Maryland is actually a call to her people to stand with her sister southern states.

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[deleted]

As a point of information, Maryland is technically a southern state

and culturally, it was a Southern state during the period depicted. My mother grew up in that region in the 40s and grew up saying "y'all". Its sensibilities were with the South. It's unfortunate but really no surprise that a black man would encounter racism anywhere in the US in that era, especially when he dared venture into medicine.

You must be the change you seek in the world. -- Gandhi

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"Just wanted to say, appels_oranjes, that you are incredibly full of yourself. So you've known about Vivien Thomas since you were eight???? You sir, are a liar."

Jeeze, not so fast! I grew up in Houston, Tx. My Grandmother was the head surgical nurse to Dr. DeBakey for over 40 years...soooo, um, it isn't unheard of for someone to have heard of Dr. Thomas since they were 8. It isn't even unheard of for someone to know them personally since before they were considered a Doctor. Let's pause for the cause before we eat each other alive for something most don't have full knowledge of...yeah, that seems the best course of action.

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[deleted]

Son of Malcolm...something as important as that was should have been public knowledge,like the first man in space

I pasted an abbreviated listing of medical firsts as they occurred in the Univ of Iowa Medical Hospitals & Clinics. Can you name one person(s) responsible for any of the achievements below? My point is there are many 'Medical Astronauts' out there. The next time you or someone you may know are captivated by the many air heads on the 'Entertainment Show' demand it be turned off. Send a message to the networks that they are not doing enough informin the public who the true innovators & pioneers are. Those that truly advance human knowledge.

http://www.uihealthcare.com/about/firstandonly.html
1900-39
•First and only hospital in Iowa with a hygienic laboratory for studying the development of infectious diseases such as diphtheria, typhoid, tuberculosis, and rabies
•First medical center to provide definite evidence that coronary artery occlusion produces heart damage and electrocardiographic abnormalities
•First research lab to record human EEG activity
•Among the first hospitals worldwide to develop a modern blood banking system, demonstrating it is safe to refrigerate, ship, and use banked blood

1940-59
•Development site of buffered aspirin, later marketed by Bristol-Meyers as Bufferin®
•Pioneering site of a revolutionary nonsurgical method of treatment for babies born with clubfoot, called the “Ponseti Method”
•First hospital in the world to develop a successful method of freezing human sperm, leading to the founding of many commercial “sperm banks” throughout the U.S.
•Pioneering site for injecting radioactive gold liquid into the prostate for treatment of patients with prostate cancer
•First and only eye bank in Iowa
•One of the nation’s first hospitals to build and use a heart-lung machine able to circulate, oxygenate, and filter the blood of heart surgery patients

1960-69
•Founding site of a national eye bank network, a group of amateur radio operators who met on the air twice daily to help the nation's ophthalmologists obtain donor eyes
•First hospital in Iowa to perform artificial heart valve replacement surgery
•First hospital in Iowa to perform laser surgery for eye disease
•First hospital in Iowa to use a saphenous vein for coronary artery disease repairs

1970-79
•First hospital to demonstrate that a reduction in blood cholesterol produces improvement in atherosclerotic plaques
•First in Iowa and one of the longest funded, NIH, multi-disciplinary research programs on the control of the heart by the brain
•First hospital in Iowa, and one of the nation’s first, to perform echocardiography (cardiac ultrasound) as a standard clinical diagnostic test
•Hospital leads first nationwide clinical trial in humans to demonstrate that reduction in blood cholesterol reduces mortality and morbidity from cardiovascular disease
•First hospital in the world with a program for determining genetic inheritance of HLA antigens in cadaver donors, providing better matching of organ donors and recipients and improved graft outcomes


Levon Helm... The Best There Ever Was, The Best There'll Ever Be

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You're an idiot, so America hides the truth? Maybe if you read a book every now and then, you won't need movies to educate you on any and everything in the world.
Have you read "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn?
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370

On the amazon.com message board do make unrelated comments like, 'Maybe if you see a period film ever now and then, you won't need books to educate you on any and everything in the world'?

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Yeah, America hides the truth by making movies about stuff in order to keep it secret. And Alan Rickman is most famous for *what* ?

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i love how folks like to "twist" a point, this story happened a long time ago thats what i meant
PUNK SS DECEPTICON

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My parents had a subscription to the Reader's Digest from back in the 1940's so I grew up reading it from a very young age and that is where I learned about Vivien Thomas in the late 60's from the article they wrote about this medical breakthrough. If more parents kept magazines coming into their houses and actually read them in front of the kids the kids would pick them up and read them also and would be educated earlier. We all know the history books are biased according to who wrote them. The one poster who learned this story at his grandmother's knee was fortunate in having access to that knowledge. The one who learned it from a movie I suggest start reading and paying attention to news breakthroughs in magazines and papers. There is a lot more out there to do than get on your favorite electronic toy to use up time.Use that electronic toy to find out information. Be curious. You might learn something about history in all facets of life. Movies don't always get it right. This one did. Many times screenwriters will jazz up the story to make it more appealing to the masses rather than being historically accurate. Reading a book is many times more accurate and Wikipedia is known for getting it wrong also since anyone can correct or post on there. In grad school we were not permitted to quote Wikipedia for that reason.

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Epic Fail in terms of this entire thread.

How this film is an example of "America hiding the truth" is a vague statement, and not exactly true, though if the OP was more specific he/she might show some merit to the statement. Even if you had no prior knowledge of the whole "Blue Baby" history and how it was a launching pad for all things related to surgical procedures on the heart/cardiac system, if you watched the entire film you saw at the end that he did get credit for all of his work (though the film did do a great job showing how much he had to go through because of his being an African-American).

To those that know all about it since the age of 8, all I can say is kudos for educating yourself. Does it give you the right to condescend to a kid that titled this thread a bit extreme and incorrectly, and then verbally attack him or try and act like 99% of Americans know all about this story (which couldn't be farther from the truth)? Well it depends on your personality and humility... maybe the film inspired the OP (whom I assume to be a teenager) and want to seek further knowledge. You can tell someone they stated something quite wrong without having to break them down and write a post full of arrogance and hate.

But I guess that's what internet forums have become these days...

To the OP, if you enjoyed the film, story, the history and things it educated you on, continue to seek knowledge and educate yourself on matters that aren't in the simple textbooks of public high school. Don't let anyone make you feel stupid for not having knowledge of a certain subject pertaining to history (there's so much history in just the 20th century that you could spend a lifetime reading about it and watching films/documentaries on any subject and still not have full knowledge of just that 100 years of American history, let alone world history.

Maybe the OP was trying to state how "America hid the truth" back in the 30's/40's when all this actually happened, and because of his race it took awhile for him to receive the credit he always deserved.

I just can't stand how people use these forums to either build themselves up or to try and tear someone else down. To debate and intelligently argue over a subject is one thing, but that's just not what goes on 99% of the time.


"You can't handle the truth!"

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Just to put a different angle on things: OP, before you suggest that history is being covered up, you might consider the question of how many of us even knew the name, not of Vivien Thomas, but of Alfred Blalock himself, before this film came out.

Personally, when it comes to pioneering heart surgeons, before seeing this movie I myself would have been able to come up with exactly three names: Michael DeBakey, Christian Barnard, and Denton Cooley. I'd guesstimate that that's more than 98% of Americans. (And that's mostly because I grew up in the 60's & 70's, when these names were making front page news with heart transplants, artificial hearts, etc.)

You have to be able to put milestones and people like this in perspective. Yes, what Blalock, Thomas, and Taussig did was a great achievement in the upward march of human progress. But human history has been filled with many many great scientific achievements, and with literally thousands of scientists whose accomplishments equaled or exceeded those of these three very brilliant people.

Yes, it's a bit sad that we weren't all educated enough in science history to be able to roll these names off our tongues, but there is indeed a limit to how much we can be taught in our years of grade school. Conversely, some schools may indeed teach about these people, but if science education classes are going to make it a point to teach the names of everyone whose accomplishments matched or exceeded those of Vivien Thomas, that's a whole lot of names to stuff into our brains, and don't be surprised if his gets lost in the shuffle.

Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers! But if you could show us something in a nice possum...

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The thing is, at Hopkins, these types of accomplishments happen all the time. Walking from Wolfe St to Broadway one passes through buildings that are named after the who's who of American Medical History. For every Vivien Thomas, I bet their are at least 9 other white subordinates who made significant contributions that weren't recognized at the time. Such is the difference between credentials and credibility.

"I think my percentage of Chimp DNA is higher than others" Cleaver Greene

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As a kid I actually remembered seeing this black man back in the 70s when they were talking about the heart and he was helping and giving information to the doctors but they made no mention of him in the surgery room and only spoke to the white doctors and I thought it was strange as a child by they claim he wasn't a doctor and didn't mention his name or his function. Now I know why.

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