Replies

I don’t recall the names of any of the patients I delivered, either.

Are doctors really this dense? No one expects a doctor who delivers babies to remember the names of the babies or families that they delivered years ago.

But those of us not doctors do expect that you might remember the hospitals you worked in and something about the dates you worked there. Some doctor who worked at whatever hospital Barry says he was born at back in 1961 might not have immediately remembered the name Obama, or a black kid, or a mother named Stanley, but he might have at least wondered if he was there, and done something to find out.

ML/NJ

I don’t recall the names of any of the patients I delivered, either.

In 1900, the population of Hawaii was 154,000 with only 233 (0.15%) black residents. By 1950, it's population had increased to almost a half million and over two thousand (0.5%) black residents. The 1960 census does not show a breakdown for black people, but in 1970, Hawaii's population was about 770 thousand with 7517 (1.5%) blacks. Extrapolating from that, you can estimate that in 1960, Hawaii's population was about one percent black.

The birth rate in the United States in 1960 was 23.7 per 1000 people. Given Hawaii's population of 632,772 that year would mean that about 15,000 were being born each year in Hawaii at the time of 0bama's birth. Out of those 15,000 births only about 150 were black children. Given that only 0.126% of married couples in the U.S. in 1960 were interracially mixed black and white, the odds that any of those 150 black children born were of such a marriage is only about one in every six years!

I find it hard to believe that any doctor with a brain that made it through medical school, could possibly forget such an event.