Dr. Ming Wang, world-renowned eye surgeon, stood to make billions from his breakthrough treatment. But he gave it all away, giving God the credit.
Wang’s stunning development in amniotic membrane contact lenses has restored eyesight to millions of blind and visually impaired patients around the world. The practice of the technology, with tens of thousands of Wang-trained surgeons globally, is estimated to be worth some $5 billion annually.
Although he won US patents for his pioneering work in the specialty, he decided to share it with the world free, forgoing kingly profits. His ingenious method uses donated, postpartum placentas that would otherwise be discarded to restore eyesight.
“I did not invent the amniotic membrane contact lens. God invented the placenta,” Wang told The Rotary Club of McMinnville Thursday.
“As a scientist I am privileged to use what God has given us,” he shared in the context of a message emphasizing his Christian faith, a spiritual commitment that calls him and others “to help those who need the most help.”
Wang, who earned a PhD in laser physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and MD at Harvard, underscored his reliance on God for guidance.
Before going into surgery, Wang asks every patient if he can pray with them. Throughout his career he has performed over 40,000 surgeries, more than 4,000 of them on fellow doctors.
From science to faith
Wang came to the Christian faith gradually, after growing up in a fiercely atheistic Communist regime in his native China.
In a WCPI interview recording following the weekly Rotary luncheon, he recalled a moment of enlightenment when his medical studies concentrated on the human eye and the process of visual perception of the external, physical world.
He asked a professor how the eye and its complex interactions with the brain could be explained in terms of the widely accepted theory of biological evolution.
The professor confessed that he had no such explanation, leading Wang to turn to the biblical account of Creation and God’s hand in biological development.
Wang’s embrace of Christianity, his chance to study in the United States and launch a career in medical practice and charitable service came after the narrowest of escapes from the cruelties of China’s Cultural Revolution, which consumed millions of innocent lives over 10 years until the death of the country’s Communist dictator, Mao Zedong, in 1976.
The backward-looking Revolution engineered an enforced ignorance of the Chinese population, forbidding education beyond what corresponded to middle school in Western countries. In his early teens, Wang and millions of his contemporaries would be uprooted from their families and communities, exiled to brutal conditions in centralized labor camps. There they would have remained, barely surviving until their premature deaths from overwork, disease and starvation.
The saving grace for the 14-year-old was his ability to play the erhu, a traditional stringed instrument often referred to as the Chinese violin. He also knew a few dance moves.
With these artistic credentials, he managed to avoid the labor camps by enrolling in government schools designed to preserve traditional Chinese culture. But the dictator’s axe was about to fall when the authorities sensed that the talented teenager “had an ulterior motive,” he confessed in the WCPI interview.
At length, through many twists and turns in his journey, Wang and two male companions made their way out of the Chinese government’s harsh oppression and landed at National Airport on the edge of the Potomac River in Washington DC.
Three-piece suit
With just a small bag of clothes, a Chinese-English dictionary and $50 loaned to him by a professor, he made his first major investment decision in America. He paid a $43 taxi fare to get to the campus of the University of Maryland, where he was able to enroll as a poor but promising student.
“My mother saved all of her wages for two months to buy me a three-piece suit because she thought all Americans dressed that way,” he told WCPI. When he and his two companions, all in their crisply pressed suits, arrived on the university campus they found themselves the best-dressed people there.
Twenty-five cents at a Salvation Army thrift store would go a long way when Wang rummaged through the racks to update his wardrobe. So he returned to classes with his bell-bottom jeans and billowy, floral-print shirts, re-fashioning himself as a paleohippie late in the Carter presidency.
Despite his meteoric success in America, Wang has not forgotten the hundreds of millions who still struggle in his homeland. In 2008 he launched the Wang Foundation for Outreach to China, officially recognized as a 501c(6) non-profit that aims to deliver 10,000 bibles to his former countrymen and their families. The charity also establishes email connections between the Chinese and American Christians who can act as pen pals, helping guide and nurture their budding faith.
“One person at a time, I want to give to the people of China the Christian that was given to me, a faith that has blessed my life richly,” he writes on the non-profit’s website. “I am excited about the immense opportunity the China Bible Pen Pal Project has of recruiting a quarter of the human race for God’s kingdom.”
The most recent outreach effort is the movie “Sight,” based on Wang’s autobiography "From Darkness to Sight," which stars Greg Kinnear.
Like Wang’s journey to America, the movie’s progress from concept to theaters was slow and fraught with complications and disappointments, he told the Rotarians and their guests at the weekly luncheon in the fellowship hall of First Presbyterian Church.
It was extremely difficult to convince major filmmakers to invest in “something other than sex, violence or cartoons,” he related. “This is a film about freedom and faith.”
As the options for getting the story into a serious, high-quality movie were nearly exhausted, Angel Studios agree to pick up the project. Movie trailers are available online for a limited time.
‘Sight’ in
McMinnville?
Bringing “Sight” to a movie house in a rural community like McMinnville is mainly a matter of local initiative and support, according to Ella Morrissey, outreach coordinator with Wang’s office.
Such expressions of interest should be directed to local theater managers, Angel Studios or the Wang Vision Institute (www.wangvisioninstitute.com).
One of the riveting episodes in “Sight” depicts the true story of a four-year-old Indian girl who was deliberately blinded by her stepmother.
“Orphan beggars who are blind get more money from tourists,” Wang explained. “While the child was sleeping, her stepmother poured sulfuric acid in her eyes.”
Bringing the blessings of vision to the sightless — especially impoverished orphans — has been the reason-for-being for the Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration. To date, that charity has helped patients from more than 40 states in the US and 55 countries abroad, with all surgeries and support services provided free of charge.
While Communist overlords in Mao’s China might have suspected the Wang teenager’s artistic intentions, his music making and stylish dancing command the respect of fellow Americans.
Country music sweetheart and superstar Dolly Partin invited him to tune up his erhu and accompany her on an album recorded at a Nashville studio. And his graceful, elegant ballroom dancing has earned him top ranking in national and international competitions.
The extended version of WCPI’s FOCUS interview with Wang will be on the air at 91.3 FM Tuesday at 5 p.m. and again Thursday at 1 p.m.
