Red Guard Raid in 1960s Ties Surgeon’s Hands

Dr. Joseph Bao, a Chinese microsurgeon who with two other doctors in a Shanghai hospital performed the world’s first reattachment of a severed hand more than two decades ago, remembers the day not long after that when the Red Guard burst into his home.

“They came without any reason,” Bao, now a Los Angeles resident, recalled Monday. “They took off our gate and took all our things, except the piano. It was too heavy.”

The fiery young militants of Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s also took Bao’s medical education records. Although he later got most of them back, he never recovered some, including proof of his clinical internship in a hospital while still attending Shanghai First Medical College.

Loss of those papers has created a problem for Bao, 48. He is without the documentation he needs, as a foreign-trained doctor, to take the written examination for a California medical license. He has been unable to practice since coming to this country a year ago.

“I’m very sorry I cannot get a license,” he said. “I cannot touch any clinical work. I have had lots of clinical experience.”

He said after that initial, historic operation, he and his colleagues at People’s Hospital No. 6 performed nearly 1,000 other replants of hands, fingers, arms, legs and feet.

Things were looking brighter Monday, however, for the man whose pioneering work in the field of microsurgery has been noted in medical journals throughout the world. Dr. Charles Ashworth and Dr. Herbert Stark, both at Orthopaedic Hospital and on the teaching staff of the USC School of Medicine, were moving to get Bao on that faculty with them.

It could lead to his obtaining a medical license after two years, if the state Board of Medical Quality Assurance decides to waive the written examination.

“It looks good,” said Bao, who has been doing research work for Ashworth. “I just heard of it (the attempt by Ashworth and Stark) this morning.”

Ashworth, president of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, called Bao a microsurgeon of “outstanding talent” and said he has “a tremendous amount to contribute to a highly specialized field.”

Marc Grimm, head of the board’s Licensing Division, said even if the document requirement were waived, Bao might have trouble passing the examination because he has been out of medical school for so long. Grimm said there is also little opportunity for a foreign doctor of Bao’s age to serve a one-year residency, even if he were willing to do that part of his life over again.

But, Grimm said, “if he were to be appointed, as an eminent physician, to a California medical school and could practice there under their tutelage for two years, we could grant him a license.”

“He would still have to convince us that he’s who he says he is, and the board would have to review what little paper work there is,” Grimm added, “but we could do it.”

He agreed that Bao is “definitely a physician of note in terms of his microsurgery techniques.”

Bao’s wife, Delia, an ophthalmologist working part-time as a postal clerk, and their daughters, Alice, 21, and Angela, 16, came here two years ago. However, Bao was not allowed to come until last year.

“I think President Reagan helped me; I don’t know,” the microsurgeon said.

Even if he finally gets his license and is able to practice his intricate specialty again, Bao worries about his skill slipping away.

“I have not been able to do surgery for more than a year,” he told the Associated Press. “It’s terrible. If a violinist or pianist hasn’t practiced, his technique will get worse.”