Abdo Khal

Okaz

I recently met a young Saudi who studies medicine abroad. I was impressed with his outstanding academic performance and his desire to add and contribute more to the field of medicine.



This young man is one of the thousands of brilliant Saudi students who have made it abroad and have proved that they are capable of performing miracles in their field. He is one of the people who did not receive proper attention in his own country.



Some of us always accuse the Saudi youth of failure, laziness and negligence. They keep saying our young men and women are hopeless cases and they will never grow up to be as persevering and serious as their previous generations. Businessmen, in particular, tend to accuse our youth of all negative traits and find such accusations a sufficient justification not give them jobs, let alone entrust with them any task.



Frankly speaking, government officials tend to do the same thing as well. They look down on the youth and dismiss them as useless. Why do we pass judgments on the youth and not give them a chance to prove themselves? What makes us think we are better than them or that they will never measure up to the tasks they are entrusted with?



Our youth are capable of being creative in anything they do, provided they get the chance and support they need. Saudi youth abroad have proved to the world that they are smart and intelligent.



I am sure that those young men and women have feelings of anger locked inside them because we underestimate their skills and assume they do not have talents. I sympathize with them because I have sat and talked with many of them in Tokyo.



Dr. Sofouq Al-Shammary, a stem cell researcher in Japan, is one of them. He is among the outstanding Saudi students who study medicine in Tokyo’s Osaka University. Al-Shammary is a member of a Japanese brilliant medical team — one of the members is a Nobel laureate in medicine.



All members of the team, including Al-Shammary, worked day and night on stem cell research until they succeeded in developing human tissues that could replace destroyed ones in the heart. Today, their experiment has been adopted and approved as one of the methods that can be used to treat a weak heart.



We feel proud as Saudis that one of the members of this brilliant team is a Saudi doctor. He told me the team is now carrying out experiments on other organs in order to see if the method will be as successful as the heart treatment.



What is really sad is that Al-Shammary is working outside his home country. What is worse is that Al-Shammary and other brilliant Saudis like him are still viewed by some Saudis as uncreative and unproductive.



Isn't it heartbreaking for us to pass false judgments on our youth?