Remember The story of The Conjoined Twins That Brought Ben Carson To Limelight?

In January 1987, Theresia Binder was eight months pregnant and suicidal.

“I wanted to kill them and myself as well,” she said, according to Carson’s best-selling book “Gifted Hands.” She had just learned that her babies were stuck together and felt as if “a sick, ugly monster” was writhing inside of her. Doctors informed the parents that if the sons remained joined, these pudgy blond babies would never be able to sit, crawl or turn over. Learning to walk was out of the question. But

Johns Hopkins in Baltimore was world-renowned for taking on difficult cases.

“After studying the available information, I tentatively agreed to do the surgery knowing it would be the riskiest and most demanding thing I had ever done,” Carson wrote. “But I also knew it would give the boys a chance — their only chance — to live normally.”

For months, a team of physicians and nurses had rehearsed for the delicate surgery. For hours they had prepped the two tiny bodies perilously joined at the head. And when it came time on that day in 1987 to put a knife to the large vein connecting them — the most fraught step in the unprecedented operation to separate infant conjoined twins — Benjamin Solomon Carson, the brilliant young pediatric neurosurgeon who had overseen the babies’ case from the start, offered his scalpel to his boss.

It was a sign of deference and respect — and perhaps, a measure of caution. But Donlin Long, head of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, refused the gesture. Carson, he had already decided, should make the crucial cut.

“Part of me thought, maybe I should take the knife. If things go badly it would be terrible for the young doctor’s career,” Long recalled this month. “But I also know that if this was a success, if things go well, it would make his reputation, would make him famous, that people would grow up trying to imitate him.”

More than any other moment in a dazzling career, the separation of the Binder twins launched the stardom of Ben Carson. The then-35-year-old doctor walked out of the operating room that day and stepped into a spotlight that has never dimmed, from the post-surgery news conference covered worldwide, through his subsequent achievements in his medical career, to publishing deals and a lucrative career as a motivational speaker — all paving the way to his current moment as a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

See grown up photos of conjoined twins- Benjamin and Patrick Binder separated by Ben Carson.

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