Dr. Mona’s Journey to the Children of Flint
ROYAL OAK, MI – If you read just one book this year, make it this one: What the Eyes Don’t See, by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha (Random House, $28). You may think it is about the Flint water crisis. In fact, it is an amazing book about America, good and bad.
Two years ago, after the state had tried to discredit her findings and smear her reputation, I talked with “Dr. Mona” as everyone calls her, the young pediatrician from Flint who first raised the alarm that children in her city were being systematically poisoned.
This was at Michigan’s annual policy conference on Mackinac Island, where she was the most eagerly awaited speaker. Months before, the state had been forced to admit she was completely right.
There was lead in the drinking water, and it was the fault of Gov. Rick Snyder’s appointees and emergency managers, who switched Flint to a toxic water sources to save money, failed to use corrosion control and lied about it, and covered up the truth.
Eventually the truth came out.
Dan Wyant, the head of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) was fired, as was Brad Wurfel, his PR spokesman who sneered at her research and at any reporters who asked questions about lead in the water.
Through him, the Snyder administration had called her “irresponsible” and her research “unfortunate” and condescendingly urged anyone with concerns about Flint’s drinking water to “relax.”
Others in government who involved in the crisis and the cover-up faced criminal charges. Gov. Rick Snyder, who had once flirted with running for President, had any hope of a further political career effectively and totally destroyed.
During her presentation, which included heart-wrenching photos of Flint kids, there was complete, fascinated silence.
Later, she told me that she was then involved with a small task force group that met weekly with the governor about Flint.
I wondered what that was like for her. Dr. Mona admitted it had been a little awkward at first, but noted that the governor had finally taken responsibility, and seemed to genuinely care. But then she added, “besides, I’m going to have to get along with the next five governors, because that’s how long this problem will last.”
Now she has written a book about what happened in Flint – apparently without ghostwriting assistance – and it blew me away.
While she lays out the whole story of Flint, this is really the autobiography of a 42-year-old immigrant who was born in England to parents who were Chaldean Christian refugees from Iraq.
Her father was an engineer, and she was still an infant when they ended up in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak. When she was five, she was nearly killed in an auto accident, and remembered a young woman doctor holding her hand and telling her she was going to be okay. That seems to have set the course of her life.
“Some thirty plus years later, I’m wearing the white coat, I’m smiling at the beautiful brown girl in front of me and firmly holding her hand … and it is my job to make sure she is okay.
That, indeed, is what she did, spurred on by and working with her best friend from high school, and environmental researcher in Washington, D.C. Suspecting there was lead in the water, despite all the official denials, they surreptitiously tested it.
The story of what happened reads in part like a crime mystery, in part like a political thriller. The narrative of the events in Flint is interspersed with fascinating stories of her public health heroes, in America and elsewhere, and stories of her family in Iraq. Dr. Mona did her research and battled the bureaucracy while treating patients, trying to take care of her husband Elliott, a fellow physician with a badly injured arm, and two daughters who wanted and needed more of Mom and less of the reporters, TV cameras and Flint.
Somehow, she seems to have kept it all together. Dr. Hanna-Attisha says that despite the appalling decisions made by various officials and politicians, “rather than seeking retribution or political advantage, I decided to remain loyal to only one group: Flint kids.
“I will do whatever it takes to help them and to keep on helping them even if it means working with people whose ideology and actions got us in this mess.”
While I don’t doubt that, this is in fact a very political book, as she puts it, “the story of the most important and emblematic environmental and public health disaster of this young century.
“More bluntly, it is the story of a government poisoning its own people – and then lying about it. It is a story about what happens when the very people responsible for keeping us safe care more about money than they care about us and our children.”
But there’s a happy and inspiring side too, “because it is also a story about how we came together and fought back, and how each of us, no matter who we are … has within us the power to fix things.”
If a child can be resilient, she concludes, “so can a country.”
To the best of my knowledge, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha has no political ambitions of her own – which must come as a great relief to the politicians. I’ve seen her speak, and can say this.
Against her, most of them wouldn’t have a chance.
