E-mail a friendStan Brock
airdate August 21, 2009
Many Americans know Stan Brock as co-host of the '60s TV show, Wild Kingdom. These days, Brock spends most of his time staging free mobile health clinics, including many in the U.S., for those without medical insurance, through his Knoxville, TN-based nonprofit, Remote Area Medical. The Englishman got the idea when he lived in the Amazon in the '50s. He's authored five books and numerous articles in various publications. He was also a pioneer Amazon bush-pilot and is a noted authority on wildlife conservation and rainforests.
Philanthropist explains his inspiration to expand healthcare to as many people as he can. (1:20)
Full interview. (14:13)
Stan Brock
Tavis: In 1985, Stan Brock founded Remote Area Medical, known as RAM, a nonprofit organization designed to provide free healthcare to third world countries. In 1992, he decided to turn his attention to people in need here in the U.S., particularly those living in rural areas.
But recently RAM set up shop here in Los Angeles, its first ever stop in a major urban area, and the turnout was staggering. Stan Brock, an honor to have you on the program, sir.
Stan Brock: Thank you very much.
Tavis: Let me start by asking the obvious. How did you find your way to Los Angeles? Why L.A.?
Brock: Well, we've actually done 566 of these operations before we came to Los Angeles and we only go where we're invited. So an invitation came from some folks in Los Angeles, Mr. Jerry Moss, as a matter of fact, who said, "You know, I saw the piece on 60 Minutes and we need the help out here. Would you consider bringing the team?" So we put it on the schedule and we're, you know, privileged to be here and offer some help.
Tavis: So you were in Inglewood. For those who are sports fans, they were set up in the parking lot of what's known as The Forum where the Lakers used to play when Magic and Worthy and Cooper were winning all those NBA championships at The Forum. So you set up at The Forum in Inglewood just outside of Los Angeles and what happened when the doors, so to speak, opened up?
Brock: Well, we spent the whole day on last Monday in setting up all the equipment, 100 dental chairs and 20 lanes of eye exam equipment and facilities for general medical treatment and our mobile vehicles for making eyeglasses on the spot.
That night, we handed out 1,500 numbers and, of course, there were more than 1,500 people there. So we stopped the count at 1,500 and then at 5:30 in the morning on Tuesday morning, the 11th, we started calling out numbers and bringing them in.
Tavis: And when all was said and done, you saw over 8,000 people in, what, two or three days?
Brock: Well, actually, we saw over 8,000 patient encounters. That means that many of the people who came in got to see the dentist and got their teeth fixed and then they went to see another doctor and they got their eyes fixed and we made them a pair of glasses. We've already made over 1,000 pairs of glasses and pulled a few thousand bad teeth out as well. Something like 260 women are lined up for mammograms.
So there's a lot of good being done over there. We've had some wonderful volunteers from the State of California, but unfortunately, the laws in the United States are very restrictive from state to state and we were not allowed to bring in volunteer physicians and dentists from other states.
Actually, that's the greatest impediment that we face anywhere in the United States to providing free care is that doctors are not allowed to cross state lines except in one state, Tennessee, where in 1995, they changed the law. So now we get California practitioners coming all the way to Tennessee at their own expense to provide free healthcare.
Tavis: How much bigger do you think what happened in Los Angeles would have been if you could have had more volunteer doctors and others to staff it, which means you could have seen more people?
Brock: Oh, without a doubt, we would have seen twice the number. I mean, let's not underestimate the value of those thousands of people that have had their care. I'm just absolutely delighted. I just wish we could have seen more and, had the law been flexible to allow us to bring in extra help, we would have filled every dental chair and every eye lane and we would have seen probably twice as many people.
Tavis: You have said that it was not your intent nor is it your motive to get caught up in the healthcare debate per se. You're not trying to make a political statement here. You're trying to serve people in need, which I totally get. But what does it say to you, though, about the state or lack thereof of healthcare in this country when you set up shop and, by the thousands, folks show up for free care?
Brock: Well, you know, a long time ago during the height of World War II, 1944, the British government which was a bipartisan government in those days at the height of the war and there were 49.7 million Britons on the island of which I was one, there was a big problem with the lack of the healthcare during that terrible time. So the bipartisan government said we're going to have universal care in this country and Mr. Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health, was ordered to make it happen.
Fast forward now, 66 years, and you probably got about the same number of people as we had in Britain at the height of the war, another 47 or 49 million people, and they don't have access to healthcare. They simply can't afford it.
The big question, Tavis, is whether or not the government is able to come to an agreement with all the various interest groups, unlike Britain where it was a bipartisan government during the war, and do something for this 47 or 49 million people that need the help.
Tavis: How do you personally process, Stan Brock, starting RAM, starting this project, to see people in under or undeveloped countries, in third world parts of the world? That's what you started to do and you end up servicing people in the United States.
Brock: Yes, yes. And if you take a photograph of what we do, as many people have, and put it in a magazine in black and white, you really can't tell the difference between what we're doing here in the United States without reading the copy than what we're doing in a place like Guatemala. I just wish that we could concentrate all of our efforts on places like Zimbabwe and Haiti and the other places that we have traditionally gone to.
But we've had to cut back on those overseas programs because, you know, we live here. This is our home and, even though I'm British by birth and still carry a British passport, I'm proud to live in this country and we've got to take care of the home front first.
Tavis: As you have traveled around the world - again, I don't mean to make you political, but I am curious as to your point of view because there's been such a great debate about what we don't have, access to healthcare-wise in this country and all kinds of comparisons in this debate that we're in to other countries. Is there a particular system that you've seen that you think works best for delivering healthcare?
Brock: Well, none of them are perfect. I mean, at the moment, the National Health Service in England has some problems in the area of dentistry. In fact, we've had some invitations to go to Britain to help out with the dental issue and we would dearly love to do that.
There were plenty of volunteers here who would be delighted to go over and help with that. We know how to run the system and see thousands of people in a short space of time. But, again, just as we cannot cross state lines here in the United States, also we're not allowed to take these fine American and Canadian dentists over to England.
If we can sort of resolve this issue that keeps coming up about these highly-qualified doctors and dentists and so forth and allow them the flexibility of traveling to different places, it would be to the benefit of millions of people that are finding it hard to keep up with their healthcare programs.
Tavis: Let me rewind to the beginning of RAM, this wonderful project. How did this idea come to be? Tell me about the origins of this, how it all started.
Brock: Well, it has its roots in the Amazon Basin. As a matter of fact, I was asked that question about five weeks ago having breakfast with the sixth man to walk on the moon, astronaut Ed Mitchell. He asked the same question.
I said, "Well, I was a young cowboy on the northern border of Brazil and I got badly injured by a wild horse and I'm lying underneath this wild horse kicking and thrashing about. The other vaqueros came running over and somebody pulled me out from underneath and said, 'Well, the nearest doctor is 26 days on foot from here.'
Well, it was about that time I got the inspiration for bringing those doctors a little bit closer." But when I said that, astronaut Ed Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, said, "Gosh, I was on the moon and I was only three days from the nearest doctor."
I said, "Well, you know, for the people that we're expecting to see in Los Angeles and those thousands that we've seen in the past, if it wasn't for these wonderful volunteers that are donating their services, they might as well be on the moon or in the northern Amazon Basin because they simply don't have access to the care they need."
Tavis: Do you keep, and if not, is it by design to not keep any data on the people that you see? Do you have any kind of demographic data on who you're seeing by race, by color, by ethnic origin, by age? Any data at all do you keep?
Brock: Well, you know, we keep a medical record that we compile on all of the people that we see just because it's good medicine. We try to provide the same standard of care that you would get if you were in somebody's office. What we don't do and what the public really likes is that, to qualify for one of our services, all you have to do is show up.
We don't ask any questions about, you know, where are you from, are you legal or illegal, do you have a job or not a job? It's first come-first serve and the public really likes that. But, of course, the wait is very, very long, but it's self-regulating. In other words, if you could afford the service, you probably would not be waiting there in line to get it free.
Tavis: I'm curious to the extent you're gonna share with me. Tell me about your life. The story of the horse is a fascinating story and I understand now how you got into this. But tell me, who is Stan Brock? Who are you beyond RAM? What's your life like? What do you do every day?
Brock: Well, this is all I do. 365 days a year, we're conducting operations in this all-volunteer force. I can identify with the people that we're trying to help because I've been homeless and I've been penniless and still penniless actually (laughter).
So we have to help people overcome those disadvantages that many of us are dealt. So that's really the whole philosophy of the 42,000-odd volunteers that we've had in the field and the good folks that we've got over there at The Forum this week in Los Angeles.
After they've had the treatment, the patients come up to the doctor and they hug the doctor even though they might have a mouthful of gauze because they've had all their bad teeth taken out. They're so grateful and it's just wonderful working with them.
Tavis: I've read - to the extent that you're comfortable confirming this - that you live a pretty meager, pretty simple, life.
Brock: Well, of course, you know, I lived with the Wapishana Indians for all those years in the Amazon. You know, if I had to miss a couple of meals for a day or two, it's no hardship because that's the way it was. So the simple life. Throw a mat on the floor wherever you are. It's just the way things are when you have that kind of an upbringing.
Tavis: And what does Stan Brock get for this love and service to humanity? What do you get out of it?
Brock: Well, what I get out of it, Tavis, is that every time we do one of these - and we've done 567 - you can't walk out of the premises wherever we're holding it, whether it's under a tent or in a canoe somewhere, without people coming up and saying, "Gosh, I'm glad you came," whether they're speaking English or some foreign language. "Gosh, I'm glad you came because I really needed this and it made a big difference for me." That's wonderful.
The downside, of course, is that we can't see everybody. So on the last day of these things, there will always be those people, you know, that come up to you in the end and, "Can you just do one more?". Well, you can't do everybody, so that's the sad part of the whole thing.
Tavis: It's a fascinating life Stan Brock lives. I asked him earlier about his love and service to everyday people. I believe, as you've heard me say before, the leadership is about the depth of your love for everyday people and the quality to your service to them.
The depth of his love and quality of his service is quite evident in this RAM project that we've been seeing all across the country and that's taken place here in Los Angeles with thousands of people being seen and helped with their medical concerns. Stan Brock, an honor to meet you and I'm delighted to have you on this program.
Brock: Thank you for the privilege.
Tavis: Thank you for the opportunity, sir.
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