Neurosurgeon

Dr. William H. Mosberg Jr., who earned national and international prestige as president of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons and as editor of a major neurosurgery journal, died Monday at Good Samaritan Hospital after a long illness. He was 73.Dr. Mosberg's medical education and work took him to three continents outside North America and to several island countries.The Baltimore native graduated from City College in 1936 at age 15. He also graduated from a business school that he attended for one year and, after working for a year in an iron foundry, enrolled the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Johns Hopkins administrators scrambled Thursday to find a commencement speaker to replace Dr. Ben Carson, who stepped down from two engagements because of backlash from recent comments he made about same-sex marriage. Carson was scheduled as the commencement speaker for Hopkins' School of Medicine and School of Education on May 23 but voluntarily stepped aside. "The dean and his staff will work their contacts to identify a noteworthy speaker and are confident that one can be secured reasonably quickly," university spokesman Dennis O'Shea wrote in an email.

Dr. Richard J. Otenasek Jr., a Baltimore neurosurgeon and volunteer who was ill with cancer, had stood humbly on the stage at Loyola High School's commencement to hear his life praised as a model for others.Dr. Otenasek, 63, who was presented the Rev. Joseph M. Kelley, S.J., Medal by the school's alumni association last month, died Monday at his Homeland residence surrounded by his family.In a letter to the alumni association, a son wrote: "My father has spent a lifetime embracing the spirit of St. Ignatius and being a man for others.

Liberal media have again shown that they can be just as self-righteous and intolerant as their ardent conservative adversaries. How else to account for the recent furor over views expressed by a world-renowned pediatric surgeon, neurologist and medical scholar? Baltimore's Dr. Benjamin Carson, an eminent Johns Hopkins Hospital figure long admired by people of all political stripes, including many liberals, is now being derided as a turncoat or doddering fool. His invitation to speak at a Hopkins commencement might be withdrawn.

Just when a legal settlement with three doctors seemed to calm tensions at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, the chief neurosurgeon yesterday filed a $6 million lawsuit, alleging that he is being wrongly forced out of his job.Dr. Clark Watts said his contract has been violated and his reputation damaged by Dr. Kimball Maull, the hospital's new director, who told him on July 6 to look for another job because of differences over the treatment of patients with head and spinal injuries.Dr. Maull insisted that he had not forbidden the 53-year-old surgeon to teach or perform surgery.

Amid all the hoopla of baseball playoffs and a new football team in town, Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, renowned Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, wants to divert attention to more cerebral pursuits."

WASHINGTON - Baltimore neurosurgeon Benjamin S. Carson said he was "humbled" when President Bush draped the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, around his neck yesterday. But such accolades are routine for the doctor who persevered through a childhood of poverty and urban violence to become the youngest department head at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a benefactor distributing thousands of scholarship dollars each year.

The Orioles received good and bad news on the ever-puzzling health of left fielder Nolan Reimold, who has been out of all baseball activites for nearly seven weeks with a bulging disk in his neck. An MRI showed that the disk has shrunen and the inflammation is gone - the good news - but the club now has no reason why Reimold is still experiencing spots of tingling in his left arm and hasn't been able to regain his strength. So Reimold - who has spent his DL time in and out of doctors offices - will now see a neurosurgeon to see if his problems are nerve-related.

Dr. Benjamin Carson, a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, will travel to South Africa next month to join a team of doctors in the delicate separation of Siamese twins who are attached at the back of the head.The girls, who are 6 months old, appear to have separate brains and a shared major blood vessel.The operation will be further complicated because one girl's brain encroaches into the other's skull.Most likely, surgeons will have to split the shared vein and reconstruct the halves so that each child has an independent and fully functioning vessel.

How much research and single-minded effort did it take for Dan Rodricks to find one illegal alien who has now (against enormous odds) become a Hopkins neurosurgeon ( "'Illegal' immigrants and the next economy?" May 15)? Has Mr. Rodricks conveniently forgotten about Adan Canela and Policarpio Perez (both illegal aliens) who were charged with the 2006 brutal murders of three Mexican children? Has he dismissed the multiple arrests of Juan Gonzales (an illegal alien)

In a letter sent to the Johns Hopkins Medical community Friday afternoon, Faculty Dean and CEO Dr. Paul Rothman labeled Dr. Ben Carson's comments on gay marriage "hurtful" and "offensive. " Rothman's letter is a turning point in what has been two weeks of a fierce culture-wars debate in the media about Carson. It shows that it wasn't only liberal opponents who were offended, as Carson, Fox news and conservative commentators have consistently contended. Carson's offensive comments were made in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on March 26 when the partisan host asked Carson for his views on gay marriage.

I am not among the many who are shocked that Ben Carson, the brilliant and widely admired neurosurgeon based at Johns Hopkins Hospital, would emerge as a hero of the political right and Sean Hannity's new best friend. That Carson would stoop to making (and later sort of apologizing for) homophobic remarks on Hannity's national television show - associating gays with pedophiles and people who have sex with animals - didn't surprise me, either. I know: Here's a man who separated conjoined twins, improved and saved the lives of countless children, established a scholars program that has benefited hundreds of young people, wrote inspirational books and gave countless motivational speeches.

  I have been tracking the dance Johns Hopkins nuerosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson has been doing with Fox News since his appearance last month at The National Prayer Breakfast. You can see my concerns about the relationship here . But Tuesday night, Dr. Carson went to a place on Sean Hannity's show that surprised even me. And I did not think anything done on such a partisan show could shock me after years of being appalled by Hannity's shamelss shilling for right-wing causes and candidates.

Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson will speak at a prominent conservative political rally next month, alongside the likes of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan, the American Conservative Union said Wednesday. Carson "represents the optimism and hope of the future of the conservative moment," union Chairman Al Cardenas said in a statement announcing Carson's invitation. Carson will be among more than two dozen speakers at the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference, to be held March 14-16 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Prince George's County.

Much of Friday's political-media online chatter was focused on Fox news hiring failed presidential candidate and pizza executive Herman Cain as a political analyst. But the big story that seemed to mostly sail under the radar was the embattled channel's hour-long, full-right-wing, all-out, let's-give-a-big-big-hug coronation later in the evening of Dr. Benjamin Carson, the famous neurosurgeon at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital, who made headlines for what he had to say Feb. 7 at the National Prayer Breakfast.

The Orioles received good and bad news on the ever-puzzling health of left fielder Nolan Reimold, who has been out of all baseball activites for nearly seven weeks with a bulging disk in his neck. An MRI showed that the disk has shrunen and the inflammation is gone - the good news - but the club now has no reason why Reimold is still experiencing spots of tingling in his left arm and hasn't been able to regain his strength. So Reimold - who has spent his DL time in and out of doctors offices - will now see a neurosurgeon to see if his problems are nerve-related.

PeopleDr. Mary P. Hogan, a Columbia obstetrician and gynecologist in practice with Drs. Esposito, Mayer, Hogan & Associates P.A., has been elected president of the professional staff at Howard County General Hospital. She will oversee the hospital's nearly 600-member medical and dental staff, preside at executive committee meetings, serve as ex-officio member of clinical departments and medical staff committees and be a member of the hospital's board of trustees. She succeeds Catonsville neurosurgeon Dr. Charles J. Lancelotta, who served a one-year term.

Paintings of birds decorated Center Stage's Head Theater for the 1999 Nightingala party. But the entertainment came in human form, as Marthanne Verbit presented an evening of piano theater to benefit the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing Community Health Nursing Program. Among the 320 guests enjoying the high-flying night: Anne Pinkard, honorary event chair; Renee Waldron and Terry Ulmer, event co-chairs; Townsend Kent, Lindy Lord, Chessie Donnelly and Mary-Ann Pinkard, event committee members; Sue Donaldson, dean of the Hopkins School of Nursing; Dr. Bill Brody, Johns Hopkins University president; former Baltimore Colts quarterback Marty Domres, now with DB Alex.

Almost 500 Emory University faculty and students have expressed their dismay that their commencement speaker on Monday does not toe the ideological line when it comes to evolutionary biology. Yes - gasp - the renowned Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson does not believe in evolutionary theory. Not only that, but biology professors at Emory and their supporters also accuse Dr. Carson of committing a thought crime because he allegedly "equates acceptance of evolution with a lack of ethics and morality.