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MUSC's Commencement Address 

Clyburn speech: ‘Anything can happen’ 

Hon. James E. Clyburn
Member, United States House of Representatives, Sixth Congressinal District
President and Mrs. Greenberg, Chairman O’Bryan and other members of the Board of Trustees, faculty members, honored guests, deans, honorary degree recipients, alumni, graduating students, families and other loved ones: Congratulations!

This graduation ceremony is possible because each of you has performed your role with diligence and with excellence. Students, faculty, administrators and policy makers all have reason to celebrate today; it's a moment of success and achievement. Enjoy it and give yourselves a well-deserved round of applause.

For my part, I'd like to introduce a theme to today’s proceedings. It may strike a chord of familiarity with some of you. I’d like to suggest that today’s graduation ceremony is proof that “Anything Can Happen.” For some of you graduating seniors, that may apply to your own feelings of relief at completing your studies at this level. For me, it has some other definitions which I hope you can appreciate. I guess it all began when I read that Pat Conroy had delivered the commencement address over at The Citadel, and I found myself shaking my head and saying, “Well, I guess anything can happen!”

Then, I was reminded that a lot of people might feel the same way about Jim Clyburn delivering the commencement address at the Medical University. 

After all, it was only a few years ago that I was out in the streets, along with a lot of other Charlestonians, protesting some of the policies of this institution. 

Not many people would have been nominating Jim Clyburn to deliver the Commencement Address to the Medical University in those days, I can assure you. But here I am...32 years later. Anything can happen.

I suppose the same holds true for the entire field of medicine today.  What would have been unthinkable in the way of treatment and procedures thirty-two years ago are practically commonplace today. And when we think of the future—the next 32 years—we can only say, “Anything Can Happen.”

Part of all that, of course, comes directly from the very process of health care education and research which we celebrate today. And increasingly, these are results which are coming from this very institution. 

We have all watched with great pride and enthusiasm the evolution of MUSC from it status as a small medical college struggling with accreditation some years ago to that of a major health sciences center and a major teaching hospital.

Just last year, for example, there were four major instances of outstanding recognition:
1. The Children's hospital was ranked by a national publication as one of the top ten in the country;
2. U. S. News and World Report ranked MUSC’s educational programs among the best in the nation;
3. A record $113 million in outside research funding was received; and
4. Approval was obtained for the construction of a Children’s Research Institute, and the South Carolina General Assembly awarded an initial $5.3 million toward the construction of the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine.

On a personal basis, the young daughter of friends of mine was brought here some months ago with a rare liver disease. When a donor could not be found, a team from this institution performed their first operation taking part of the father’s liver and using it to replace the child’s diseased liver. Parent and child are doing fine today, thanks to the remarkable skills of this institution’s staff.

These things did not just happen. They have come about because of the enormous efforts and leadership of President Ray Greenberg and the entire MUSC community, and I congratulate him and all of you. 

And for any of us who have been around this town for very long, we must recognize the role which President James B. Edwards played in turning around the fortunes of this institution and setting it toward the great future it can now anticipate. 

It's been a marvelous transition, and it's one which deserves the gratitude of the citizens of this state, the health care professionals everywhere and the generations of patients who will benefit from this school's excellence.

All of that, of course, suggests to you an unquestioned reality. This graduating class is the best prepared set of practitioners ever produced during the long and distinguished history of this institution. The treasure of biomedical knowledge at your disposal is greater than at any time in history. Your teachers and mentors are better qualified than ever before, and your facilities are state-of-the-art. Your careers hold the great promise of a great institution, and there are few obstacles to great individual careers for each of you.

The world you enter, however, is a complicated and puzzling one. For all the advancements we have experienced in the medical sciences and technology, we find troubling inconsistencies. In a nation which considers no challenge too great, there is evidence that we seem to be stumped on this one.

Most of you are familiar with the dilemma in which we find ourselves. 

Several years ago, a book addressing the health care problems of this nation asked rhetorically, “Why are costs so high, coverage so incomplete and financing so irrational?” The tentative response was this:

“The performance of the U. S. health care system is not the result of the evil behavior of a few. Instead, everyone in the system—doctors and patients, hospitals and insurance companies, business and government—interact in complex ways with each group adapted to its own peculiar niche.”

In other words, there are dynamics within this nation’s health care community which divide us politically and economically, and those dynamics seem to defy a reasonable and comprehensive solution. 

Believe me, it’s the view most commonly seen in Washington, and it's one which has baffled and frustrated many Members of Congress for years. We need only to look at one statistical indicator to appreciate the depth of frustration felt not only by this nation’s political leaders, but also by those of you practicing and beginning your professional practice.

I refer to a report of the World Health Organization, a report  which documents that no nation on this planet spends as much or commits a higher percentage of its wealth to health care than the U. S. No other nation even comes close. The American people spent 13 percent of their Gross Domestic Product in the year 1999 on health expenditures. Or roughly $4,200 per capita...double and triple the amount of most other nations.

And yet, in the rankings of overall health system performance, the U. S. was no better than 37th among all the nations of the world, and in the level of health of their citizens, Americans were 72nd. Imagine that. At a time when U. S. institutions are producing unimaginable medical breakthroughs, we cannot seem to find ways to bring them to the benefit of many of the citizens of this nation.

The situation grows even more unfortunate when we examine the plight of minority populations in this context. It certainly comes as no surprise that health care indicators in the minority communities are measurably and consistently lower than the rest of the nation’s populations. Such a revelation becomes even more significant when we realize that by the year 2030—less than three decades from now—it is predicted that 40 per cent of the American population will be minority. 

As I told a health care group in Washington a few months ago, no single issue will more clearly test our democratic principles, no single issue will test our economic system, no single issue will test our technological capability than that of equitable health care.

My observations are not limited to the experience of the Sixth District of South Carolina, which I represent in Congress, although I invite you to join me in examining conditions and health care needs only a few blocks from where we gather today.

I speak of a problem of truly national proportions, a problem which I could see firsthand in travels with President Clinton to Native American Reservations in the Southwest and Northwest of this nation. 

 I could see how the dimensions of the problem extended beyond the clinic and beyond the hospital, and into the environment around us. 

In September of last year, I—as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus—formed a National Environmental Policy Commission. Along with leaders from business, health care, environmental interests, tribal, state and local governments, I have visited with and listened to citizens from all parts of this country tell of their troubles and fears. 

Out of that experience, I have requested that the Commissioners submit a report of their findings and their recommendations to me during the Congressional Black Caucus’Annual Legislative Conference in September of this year. 

But I find myself preaching to the choir. All of this grew out of a landmark Environmental Justice Conference which this institution co-sponsored, co-hosted and coordinated at Hilton Head in 1999. That conference focused on the recurring issue of access to health care. 

When the American Indian/Alaskan Native Environmental Justice Roundtable was held last summer in New Mexico, I was pleased to be a guest speaker, and I have never been more proud of the efforts of any entity of my home state than I was of the report of that Roundtable published by this institution. 

Once again, a major theme of this report was on the issue of access to health care.

This university has, in fact, taken a leadership role in working to eliminate health disparities, through outreach programs such as Our Health: Bridging the Disparity Divide, Hands on Health, Project REACH, the EXCEED program, the Healthy South Carolina Initiative and many, many others. In short, those of you who graduate from this institution today leave with more than a marvelous education in your field. 

  • You leave with an institutional legacy to do more with your lives. 
  • You leave with an institutional heritage of deep concern and abiding compassion for those who fall into the category of under-served in access to health care. 
  • You leave MUSC with an institutional imperative to reject the status quo of disparity which exists in the delivery of health care to Americans.
 My friends, anything can happen. 

And with your hard-won professionalism, your legacy of institutional concern, and your own sense of human fairness and dignity, many good things will happen. I am sure of that. 

We do not lack the know-how. 

We do not lack the technological capability. 

We do not lack the national wealth. 

What we have lacked in the past has been a sense of social will to confront and conquer this most pressing of needs for the American people. 

In all honesty, I have never felt more optimistic about our chances for success in this area than I feel right now. 

Standing here and looking out over this class of emerging professionals, and recognizing the enlightened setting in which your education has taken  place, I can feel and express only the best of good hope and good faith on this occasion. 

Never turn your back on a difficult case. Never turn your back on a social challenge. Never turn your back on a persistently troublesome problem of our world. Anything can happen on this marvelous planet we are blessed to occupy. I know. And you do, too.

Thank you.