Medical Students that Changed the World

There are many former medical students that achieved positions of great power and influence after graduating. Ex medical students include Che Guevara, Bashar Al-Assad, Bill Frist (Majority Republican leader) and Luke Johnson (founder of Pizza Express). More awe inspiring are medical students that began to influence the world before finishing medical school! Here's a snapshot of some of these medical students that changed the world during their time at medical school:

1. Stephen Bantu (Steve Biko)

Considered one of the most important politicians in South Africa's history. During his time at the University of Natal Medical School, he started the South African Student's Organisation (SASO) which provided legal aid and medical clinics to poor black communities. He founded the Black Consciousness Movement, which sparked the uprise against apartheid in South Africa. Due to his involvement in anti-apartheid politics he was expelled from medical school and 'banned' by the Apartheid government. In 1977, he was killed while in police custody and consequently became a symbol for resistance against Apartheid in South Africa.

2. Joshua Lederberg

Received a Noble Prize, aged 33, for work he did as a medical student at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons. His research provided insight into the molecular mechanisms of gene action, and helped establish the field of molecular biology in the 1940s and 1950s. Instead of finishing medical school, he chose to accept an offer to become an assistant professor the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

3. Meles Zenawi

The current prime minister of Ethipoia and former president, interrupted his medical studies the University of Addis Ababa University for two years to lead the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), who overthrew the Derg, a military junta. This ended the Derg's reign of Ethiopia, which caused up to 1.5 million Ethiopians to die from famine and the Red Terror.

4. Ernest Duchesne

Who discovered penicillin? If you said Alexander Fleming, you would be wrong! 32 years earlier, a French medical student noticed that moulds kill bacteria. This observation was made, when he noticed that Arab stable boys at the army hospital kept their saddles in a dark, damp room to encourage mould to grow on them. When he inquired they replied that the mould helped the saddle sores heal on the horses. Duchesne then made a solution out of the mould and injected it into diseases guinea pigs. They all recovered. As he was 23 and just a medical student, his findings did not receive recognition and his dissertation did not even get acknowledged by the Insitut Pasteur. His pleas for further research were ignored. He was honored after his death, 5 years after Alexander Fleming got the Nobel Prize for rediscovering penicillin.

All the information was acquired from Wikipedia!