President Otto Perez Molina and foreign minister Fernando Carrera | Courtesy / Office of Senator Rand Paul Paul mulls China medical mission

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), after spending six days in Guatemala this summer doing free eye surgeries, plans a similar pro bono mission for next summer, perhaps in China, he told POLITICO in an interview.

Paul, who traveled with three staff members, journalists from five news organizations, plus conservative filmmaker David Bossie, worked with six other eye surgeons. The group performed about 250 surgeries, and he did about 20 of them.


Here is a lightly edited transcript of a phone conversation with the senator, who spent 17 years as a practicing ophthalmologist in Bowling Green, Ky.:

( PHOTOS: Rand Paul visits Guatemala)

POLITICO: How were surgeries different in Guatemala than back home?

PAUL: “In the United States, people are obviously pleased when they get their vision back. But it’s not always as dramatic as this, since … most of these patients [were] at least nearly blind and some virtually blind. And so to get their vision back — [it’s] just an amazing thing to see the smiles, the hugs, the tears the day after [when the bandages come off].”

POLITICO: What’s the difference between American and Guatemalan cataracts?

PAUL: “The severity. I do pro bono surgery in Kentucky, as well, and I will see some cases sometimes that are nearly as bad as these, because most people have the ability to get them out. Whereas down there, maybe, a third of the people get theirs out, because [so many] don’t have the resources to do it or the doctors to do it. The biggest form of preventable blindness …. is cataracts. And it mostly can be restored by removing the cataracts. They also get more sun exposure than we do, so they probably have a little higher incidence of cataracts.”

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POLITICO: What was it like to travel with an entourage?

PAUL: “I think some outlets may have overplayed that a bit. The main part of the entourage were people actually doing surgery and getting the patients ready for surgery. … [T]he vast majority of the entourage, if you want to call it that, were people checking vision, checking pressures, checking the measurement on how long the eye is so we knew what kind of lens to put in it. … There were probably [seven] surgeons, five surgical techs, two nurses giving shots. So really it was a huge entourage, but it was mostly medical personnel."

POLITICO: What did you think of the drone that Citizens United President David Bossie used to get overhead shots of the clinic for his film?

PAUL: “That was pretty cool. I’ve seen a lot of videos shot that way. … [I’m] fascinated by cameras and technology.”

POLITICO: Tell me about the Hernandez brothers.

PAUL: “The Hernandez brothers, I operated on in 1999. They came to the United States when one was 8 and Andreas was 14, and they came with virtually no vision. One could see hand motion and the other could see light. And we wondered whether they would get vision back, because if you have cataracts as a baby, the vision center of your brain doesn’t develop; and even when the cataracts were removed, you don’t get back vision.

“So we took the cataracts out and technically the surgery was perfect, but we were still uncertain how much vision they would get back. And we were excited after their surgery in 1999 that they did get back what we call ‘ambulatory vision.’ They can identify objects. They can see where to go as far as walking down the street, get to their house, get to the river to get water, things like that. But they don’t have fine vision.

“And so we saw them again … to see if there’s anything else we could do when we’re in Guatemala, and it was great to reunite with them. It’s exciting that they are able to have some functionality around their community. We did not find anything new that we could do for them. But we’re so happy for them that they had improved vision, when we saw them back in the ’90s, and it was nice to reunite with them.”

POLITICO: Hermanaldo Lopez may have been the most dramatic of all the patients.

PAUL: “He had lost his vision almost entirely over a three-year period. He also lost his wife, lost his family, lost his job, and lost 40 pounds. He was emaciated, and someone from the local church took him in. So a young man brought him in to us, and he basically had been just wasting away. And when he had his cataracts out, he was just overwhelmed with emotion, thanking God and getting down on his knees — so ecstatic that he could see again, and hoping that he would be able to drive a truck again, and hoping that maybe he would be able to reunite with his family."

POLITICO: Tell us about Juli Estrada?

PAUL: “She’s a young woman that came to me in the 1990s, and I did surgery to straighten her eyes. I remember her being a very pretty little Guatemalan girl, who now has grown up to be a pretty young woman. And we were excited to see that her eyes were still very straight. She still needed some glasses. But with glasses, it would get to 20/20. They didn’t make the kind of glasses for her in the clinic there. So we’re in the process of trying to get a pair of glasses to send back to her."

POLITICO: We saw a picture of Sergio Gor, your RAND PAC communications director, in scrubs.

PAUL (laughing): “We’re going to try to keep him away from the operating room. No, he did great. … My staff, the other staff gave drops, they took patches off. They cleaned discharge from around the eyes to see things again. Everybody enjoyed it. [One of my sons] went with us. David Bossie and my son and a friend of mine who’s in Rotary brought down a water system, and they found this local school and put a water system in for a local school. And my son was able to give them soccer balls that he got from the surgery team."

POLITICO: Are you going back?

PAUL: “The University of Utah has made a five-year commitment to the community, and so they will go back. They also bring some of the surgeons back to the University of Utah to train them, to help them so we can take out more cataracts when we’re not there. And I do want to do another trip. We talked about either going back to Guatemala, … and I have a longtime connection …

“But I’ve also talked about maybe trying to go to China next year. One of the surgeons was Chinese-American, and he’s excited about the possibility of getting into China. So we’ll see. We haven’t made a decision yet, but we may. … That would probably be in August again, if we do it next year. We’re looking at China, and the possibility of going back to Guatemala. But I’m intrigued by trying to go to China on a mission trip.”

POLITICO: You said during a “Meet the Press” interview taped in Guatemala that the idea of your running for president “scares” some Democrats.

PAUL: “Anybody worries about a candidate that might be able to draw on voters that are not traditional voters. The key to winning any general election in our country is to excite your base and then expand your base — get independent voters and voters who haven’t been voting for your party to come to your party.”

POLITICO: How do you feel about the response to concerns about the militarization of police?

PAUL: “I think that neither party has really responded on the militarization aspect … all this military equipment we’ve been offloading. I think it’s gotten out of control. And really something needs to be done, because really the police response needs to be different than a war response. I’m getting the plug being pulled here, so I’m going to hand you back to Sergio.”