All Men Dream: But Not Equally
By T.E. Lawrence
" All men dream: but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds
wake in the day to find that it was vanity:
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men,
for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible."
T.E. Lawrence (
"Seven Pillars of Wisdom"
What if one of your dreams was to become the Dean of
What if you had traveled the world delivering care and solace to all comers, in the Peace Corps, in Africa, in Saudi Arabia, and finally in rural New Hampshire, where you are the last old time GP still in practice who takes care of the poor, the uninsured, the marginalized, on a walkin basis?
What if over 200 of those patients, and many others from all over the world, signed and sent letters recommending you for the Dean of Medicine Position, but none had ever had the courtesy of an answer from the “Insider”Academics on the Selection Committee at Harvard?
What if the cloistered Academics, who first asked you and others for suggestions as to an appropriate Dean choice, were simply blowing smoke up your whatsis, as they circled the wagons and set about to select someone who looked, and talked, and thought, much as they do? Academics are generally quite nervous about the rest of us.
What if, once again, these “Insiders” set about to select someone who had never worked anywhere in the real world, never had had real blood all over them, never ever held anyone in their arms, who was dying, never worked a “Tombstone Shift” at an ER in Watts, LA, in fact had never lived a true physician's life at all?
What if the latest iteration of Harvard Insider Academic" We Know Best" means that Harvard will continue to indebt by more than $300,000 the incoming Medical Students/Altruists who come to Harvard their Freshman year saying " I want to do some good in the world, take care of people" but, by virtue of the huge debt, have had forcibly removed their dreams and all their good intentions, long before they graduate?
What if the same group of Harvard Insiders had already systematically refused, and will continue to ignore, rather than to address and halt the extraordinary pilferage of the donations of many generations of alums at the Harvard Endowment, where six greedy men and their entourage spend over $575,000 each and every day, upon themselves, and their percs, a sum large enough to educate over 4000 kids at the Med School, all the other Grad Schools, and many at the College, completely tuition free? All that is needed is a competitive bidding process, to select a world class Fund Manager(s) to manage these selfsame funds for a tiny fraction of these costs and this amount would be freed up for kids.
Imagine, hundreds of dedicated physicians , or,---- six greedy men!
Instead of all the above, what if the Dean of Harvard Medical School used the "Bully Pulpit" of this Iconic "Beacon For The Brilliant" Medical School to seek and achieve real change in the world?
Imagine this is the goal of the new Dean, the creation of a new generation of altruist physicians, because I do....
Following is an email thread to and from a benign Insider, in reverse order:
D****,
What if anyone outside the Insider group actually knew who the Dean was or what he/she espoused for causes in this world, and particularly in the
Do any of you, who read this, know the name of the present soon- to -retire-Dean? ( Dr Joseph Martin), or what he has had to say or do that in any way changed your life?
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Thank you D****,
Does this mean that you will help me in my quest?
It is an important question, very important, because,
I will certainly fail at the bureaucracy level if I do not have your help, most especially at the beginning.
I have a longtime friend, Mike G, who has corresponded with you, I think, whom I will ask to help me with the day to day political decisions,
because this is a political job as much as anything, in my view
Mike was the Chairman of the Salem NH Democratic party and we have been friends since I went there as a complete unknown in 1992,
and spoke about why I thought I would make a good US Senator.
He shook my hand, and never let it go again.
"I have a dream"
I do, and it is time for an aggressive dreamer in this job, I truly believe
Help me.
You will not regret it.
I have admired your smooth way of doing things since the first time I met you.
We will NOT always agree.
Smart guys never "always agree" ,in my experience.
Needed is some counterweight, some "loyal opposition"
It is one thing to dream big dreams, this job is too important to attempt without both inside and outside help
Help me, please.
Terry
To: D****
Subject: Could we talk?
I do not know how to read the silence as the Dean selection process
presumably goes forward.
Will I, or will I not ,get interviewed?
We both know how deleterious/dangerous it is in Biology and in Genetics
to stick with small gene pools, and so it is, in my view, with
bureaucracies.
Choosing a new Dean because he/she looks like all the academics who are
doing the choosing, in total secrecy, is not necessarily the wisest way
to go about it If there is a single candidate with more ( albeit
nonacademic, realworld) people by count, recommending them, I would be
interested to know that.
Can the Search Committee find and choose Someone with a better demonstrated track record of loyalty to the school, someone else who gave their life’s savings, for example...,
Someone with a more passionately conducted life as a physician and
advocate for patients and the physicians who do the work, their work....
I would appreciate your frank view of what is happening, and what I
might do to at least be interviewed, even if they are not really
serious. at the outset...
I think I could change their minds, if given the opportunity.
A lot of people will be both disappointed and angry if that interview
doesn't happen I think the window of opportunity for Harvard to reverse
the current counterproductive and counterintuitive trends is short, and
closing.
You will help me to "break the china" in a controlled fashion, won't you?
( Assuming that I am interviewed, succeed, and now I/we have to figure
out what comes next) I would not be the first neophyte you shepherded
Best regards TMB
thanks ,as always I appreciate honesty.
As far as business expertise, and the budgeting of large sums etc.. So called "business experience "
I run three successful businesses now, while running a fulltime medical practice.
I would be very surprised if there is a single other Deanship candidate who is a self made multimillionaire, and who did not stoop to theft or other illgotten methodology to arrive there.
Starting off owing $2800 to Harvard, I made both good deeds and great wealth occur, creating projects with big impact, but with no money in the budget, in the third world .I collected, and then sold, old cars, ”The Harvard Collection”. The sale brought Harvard over $4Million, my life’s savings.
As you know, that is my track record, and I put the millions together while working miserably paid jobs in do-good agencies for the most part, and gave it to the school to stop them from indebting the young and dreamfilled, they didn't, they haven’t, they won’t.
Frankly, if the Selection Committee does this all in closed chambers, stays with the narrowest possible range of DNA available, and secretly selects another silent aging academician, I will have to rethink a number of things, including the donation which has been so dishonored so far.
If newly appointed Harvard President Drew Faust is not angry about waste at the Endowment, and is not amenable to/planning to put that incredible mess out to public tender so that the waste stops and 4000 more brilliant kids have access to funds,
I will be more than disappointed.
Fair warning
Again, thanks
Terry B
D*** wrote:
Thank you for my copy of your letter to the search person. It is one of the most beautiful pieces on medicine I have ever read.
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Hello Kasia,
Thank you for the reply;
I would not press for the job of Dean of Harvard Medical School, at my age, and at my station in life, if I did not think the Dean’s job did not need a rethink, a change from,
an inarguably good man, the present Dean and most of his predecessors,to a zealot, of sorts, with a considered and announced,
very public,totally nonsecret, pro patient anti “money only” agenda, one which will change the life/lives of the man/people on the streets of America, and by extension, the world.
Humor me a little:
Ask the first one hundred people you meet on the streets of
or what, if anything, has he stood for, while he has been Dean, and how has his tenure positively impacted/affected their lives and those of their families?
What has the Dean of Harvard Medical School caused in the way of useful change in their lives? What has he changed, for the better, or at all?
I will be surprised if one person in one hundred knows his name, or thinks his existence in any way affects their lives, and so will you.
It is my belief that so much has changed for the worse in American Medicine,
that the HMS Dean’s name should be a byword, his/her positions clearly known, and the positions inarguably pro bono publicum,
as he/she struggles publicly to change the status quo, tries get the 45 million uninsured into a universal healthcare program of some kind or another, tries publicly to get US drug prices within the reach of patients, tries to get American community hospitals to return to full and fully charitable services offered to their communities, and vows to be producing debtfree zealot “gonna go out and change the world” physicians from HMS to go out and effect the necessary change(s), before all is lost, forever.
What is my own track record, and why should it commend itself to you? To HMS?
i.e. Why do I think you should choose me, a doer, not a talker, nor a quiet Academic?
- I figured out how to "work my way" though HMS, so as to avoid debt, keeping my dreams of adventure alive, in so doing. I sold blood and semen, then ran a used car lot out of the Vanderbilt Hall parking lot, borrowed only $2800, total, and, thus, preserved my dreams of adventure. The preservation of low debt/no debt status cost me any chance of finishing in the top of my class, but facilitated the furtherance of my dreams, my own “go out and change the world” plans. There was nothing simple nor easy about it.
- A choice had to be made, big debt, and totally dead dreams, or small debt, and dreams neverending. Next, as part of my plan for adventure/dream facilitation, I arranged my training at LACGH, and my during Residency moonlighting jobs at “battlefront ERs”, so as to be prepared to meet anything, anywhere, anytime, and never be unprepared/terrified again. You have no idea how many dead people I carry with me, as I travel through this life, and of what I learned/had to learn therefrom, about disaster prevention and critical timing, while trying so desperately to stay the clock and save them, then. Some I did save.
- Some I could not. The dead ,and the lessons they taught me, I carry still.
- I then took my Harvard education and my LACGH, Pasadena Police Dept Ambulance Doc, Bon Air Hospital in Watts, battlefield training first to the Peace Corps, which was difficult enough, and then to some of the most difficult places imaginable, where i delivered solace and care without any loss of quality, going, defiantly, to prison, 7 times, in 5 years, ( overnight stays, then released again, as some Prince or some Bin Ladin or some other well placed patient intervened)I went voluntarily, to prevent a truly evil landlord from evicting me from my clinic, while working in Saudi Arabia, so as to be able to continue to deliver care by my own standards, to all comers. Show me another Western physician who ever got a private license there, and you will begin to see what I have gone through and made happen.
- Upon my return I worked walkin clinics, prisons and insane asylums, precisely because I believed ( and still do believe) that the indwellers and uninsured people living near or in such places suffered from substandard/zerostandard care. Their care is marginal even now.
- I have been in
- Part of the continuous pursuit of excellence, is to refuse to set any artificial boundaries about access to your knowledge, or your person. In my view a "complete physician" may not have preset notions of who may or may not be let into their presence. Because,
- Some of the most extraordinary experiences of my life as a physician have occurred while taking care of the destitute, the marginalized.
- In addition to the clinic, I worked prisons…see attached story “Prendergast”, and I demanded decent care for the inmates.
- I have not won each battle I chose to fight, no one can. Bet that nobody who was on my side, or the other side ever forgot the battle, though.
I have somewhere between ¾ million and 1 million patient visits behind me now.
For 43 years I have done my work, and done it with as much love and respect as I could muster.
I never set limits, except time, for anyone of any origin, any means or lack thereof, to gain access to me/my services.
I never cared about money.
I did care immensely about quality of care, and about being a complete physician to my patients, which is why, at age 68, I still have over 10,000 active charts.
I could go on, but my CV speaks for itself, as do the letters written on my behalf.
So does my 1991 multimillion dollar donation to HMS and HSPH so that the indebtedness of young doctors at Harvard would cease ( It has Not)
If I am interviewed, as a serious Deanship candidate, I will speak to the issues I feel most pressing. I look forward to it.
Conversely, if I am not interviewed, that, too, will speak volumes.
Terry M. Bennett MD MPH
Curriculum Vitae
Terry Michael Bennett DOB
Father; Terry C. Bennett MD, Physician Mother Blanche S. Bennett, Pianist
Siblings (4) Diane, Cynthia, Jill, Tim. Sons Terry Jr. age 36 , Timothy John age 33
Married (second) wife Piper, daughter Persephone age 10,.
Work History:
Prior to College; Lifeguard, Gardener, Coach, Salesperson.
During College; Laboratory Technician, Lifeguard, Coach, Salesperson, Entrepreneur.
Educational History:
Elementary School(s) Linda Vista School,(K-1, ) Polytechnic School (private, 2-6), Junior High La Canada 1950-54, High School John Muir,1954-56, graduated 1956.
National Merit Scholar, Editor of La
Lettered in Football, Track, Swimming, Tennis, all years.
Honors at Entrance USC 1956, Lettered in Freshman Water Polo1956-57
Major Zoology
Jobs worked while at USC, Coach, Lifeguard, sales and numerous “dirty jobs” including dead body transport.
1959 Spring Semester University of Vienna Austria, majored in German language and Philosophy…No Undergraduate Degree (excess credits, but too few in Zoology)
Languages spoken and written French, German, English, spoken only Arabic (now rusty)
Accepted to
Graduated
Jobs worked while in
Internship and Residency 1964-66
Military Service (equivalent) USPHS Peace Corps 1966-68 Morocco.
(I was both the Peace Corps Physician and the Project Director for the joint Peace Corps/Moroccan Ministry of Health Laboratory Technician’s Project,
(120 Volunteers all over the Kingdom).
I was the Ministry of Health’s “thirteenth man”.
(The one with a truck and fuel, to allow me to travel the entire Kingdom and fact gather for the Ministry)
1968-69 Harvard School of Public Health Master’s Program, Full Tuition Scholarship.
MPH June 1969. Major- Demography and Population
1969-70 Director of Operations in
(Pathfinder was/is a private Foundation specializing in Maternal Child Health/Family Planning worldwide)
During this period I designed and developed/funded/recruited and educated Providers for programs in almost every country in
(There are still projects running that I designed and implemented in 1969)
1970-71 Co Director of Worldwide Programs for the UUSC of Boston (Unitarian Universalist Service Committee) Public Health oriented programs worldwide.
These jobs being severely underpaid, I had begun moonlighting as an ER Physician. ER Director in the Southbridge Webster area of
The birth of my first son forced a reassessment of the present and the future finances.
1972-73
1973-74 Medical Director Raytheon MidEast Systems,
1974-81 Medical Director American Medical Center of Jeddah, an enormously successful “Walk In Clinic” which had charts on over 50,000 patients, systematically treated over 120 patients per day.
The private side of this clinic was legendary ( Physician to the Ali Reza Family, BinLadin Family, Zahid family, etc,
The corporate side served more than 80 Western, European, Middle Eastern and
During that time, I was also Chief Physician for Alitalia Airlines in
Dept in the
( I obtained and still possess the only “Private Practice” Saudi Medical License ever issued to a non Moslem, non Middle Eastern origin physician )
1981 to present, Private Medical Practice and occasional Public Health consulting work based in Seacoast New Hampshire. 81-89 Hampton Falls/Hampton, 1989-2005 Rochester)
Corrections Medicine 1988-91, Goldberg Medical( in
Medical Commentator Channel 56
Sept 1991 donated my collection which became the “Harvard Collection” Benefit auction 70 cars ,multiple other objects $4.2 million donation achieved for future scholarships.
1992 Candidate for the US Senate, lost in Primary, 18% of vote,.. severely underfunded campaign
Litigator vs New Hampshire Board of Medicine 2001 to present over Physicians’ rights and limits to Board’s powers, multiple media appearances, etc.
Lawsuits vs NH Board of Medicine won 2/2
1999-present , Current practice address
(Clinic On The Common)
Malpractice lawsuits to date… zero worldwide
Any questions please call office
Terry M Bennett MD MPH
Tel 603 332 0379
Fax 332 2165
Cell 781 0195
Pager 240 5000
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Dr. Terry M. Bennett, an independent family physician poses in his office at Clinic on the Common in
By
shaberman@seacoastonline.com
PORTSMOUTH — Dr. Terry Bennett, the controversial and opinionated Rochester physician who has traveled the world practicing medicine — including a stint as physician to the Saudi royal family — does not have high hopes that a fix can be found for the country's broken health care system.
The reason, he contends, is that the amount of money involved in the system brings out one of the more negative human attributes — greed.
"Unless and until these extraordinary costs unique to the
There are four primary reasons for Bennett's pessimism: the educational debt carried by new doctors; the practice of hospitals "owning" the physicians who are affiliated with them; extraordinarily high prescription drug costs; and the advent of health management organizations, which have assumed a middleman position between patients, health care providers, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals.
Bennett asserts that the debt carried by young doctors makes it virtually impossible to take into consideration the amount a patient can afford to pay for his or her medical treatment.
"In the good old days, young doctors graduated from medical school debt free and could go to a bank, borrow money, set up a practice, open their doors, accept all comers at varying fees — depending on the ability of the patient to pay — and be granted enough time to establish a practice, before paying back the bank loan," Bennett said. "That is all finished now, because, in the
No bank will ever lend that student more money, and the student must take a hospital or other employee job immediately upon end of training, because the bank that financed the education wants to be paid, the
The second issue involves the driving up of health care costs by what Bennett calls "corruption" at the hospital level.
"Once hospitals came to own all or most of the practitioners in their area, they controlled how, when and where patients are seen, and, most importantly, how much it costs," he said. "By simply diverting patients from outpatient care to the emergency room, a fee differential of $75 to about $1,000 occurs."
Bennett believes this is done hundreds of times a day in larger hospitals, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for traditionally not-for-profit institutions. In order to utilize that revenue so as not to show a profit, hospitals spend it on extravagant construction schemes and new equipment acquisition.
"It is all done in order to bury huge profits being earned by what is, in principle, a not-for-profit institution," Bennett contended.
He said the exorbitant cost of prescription drugs is another factor driving up costs and creating a situation where greed becomes a motivating factor.
"The third insurmountable obstruction/corruption unique to the
What the
The last corrupting influence Bennett pointed to is the advent of HMOs. Originally formed to bring common business sense to the health care industry, it became a spawning ground for those more interested in making money than correcting the ills of a system that failed to address the needs of consumers, he contended.
"In fact, the greediest people we have ever seen are the people that introduced the HMO concept to the
All this has led to an untenable situation for health care consumers, said Bennett.
"Medicare and Medicaid are insolvent, and HMO/health insurance premiums are rising at 20 percent per year, all attributable to runaway profits at all levels," the
Unless and until these issues are addressed or there is a general "consumer/voter uprising," there is little hope of seeing a system that supplies quality health care to all citizens ever being enacted, Bennett contended.
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If you, the reader of this , thinks that Harvard should open the doors of Academia to a non Academic on a very clear mission to return iconic Harvard Medical School to a “Beacon For The Brilliant”, and to stop indebting the student idealists that are attracted there,
Please call Ms Kasia Lundy (1 617 495 1385)or email kasia_lundy@harvard.edu ,or newly appointed Harvard University President Drew Faust, Drew_Faust@harvard.edu, and tell them so.
Left to their own devices, no outsider such as me will ever get considered,
No Matter What We Have Done, or Wish To Do, For
The future is at stake, and so far greed and old habits are prevailing, to the detriment of us all.
