Not sure when it is for you right now. In my time it is the Fourth of July weekend. Happy Independence Day! (To our British readers: we still love you guys. It was the heavy-handed, long distance ruling that was the problem.)
I sent out another holiday greeting to ‘my’ researcher at Wills. This is my low-key campaign to get into the stem cell study. I have been told I will get the first call as soon as the corporation gets its crap together.
The corporation? Ocata Therapeutics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Astellas Pharma, a Japanese pharmaceutical company. If you have been reading my pages you might recall I had been told the study was ready to launch last fall. Instead, Ocata was bought out to the tune of $379,000,000 (for those of you not interested in counting zeros, that is 379 million dollars. Whoa.) While they have been reorganizing, my vision has been progressively getting worse.
It is sort of hard at times not to be bitter. People I know get outraged for me. That is nice. Makes me feel supported. They rage about money being more important than people’s well-being and point out I am going blind while they are playing monopoly. Thanks for the observation. Got that.
Today a friend asked me about the study. Again. I told her we are half way through the six months I was told the researchers were expecting it to take for the reorganization. I told her I did not have many options so I will have to wait.
Later, out of curiosity, I went back on the clinical trial websites. I searched again. Could there be another option? I found the exact same study I have been looking at for the past year. The best of the lot. It is like I have my name on the thing.
FYI – for those of you who have wet AMD, there are a lot of interesting new clinical trials being started. [Click here to find one way to become involved with them.] There might be five times the trials for wet as there are for dry. Check them out. Help them out if you can and volunteer. I know what they already have is giving decent results and why mess with success.
Still it is important to support the research. What is the saying? Behold the turtle. He only gets ahead by sticking his neck out.
Anyway, if anyone happens to know Yoshihiko Hatanaka, CEO of Astellas Pharma, could you give him a message? “With all due respect, sir….get it in gear!!!! Not only are you delaying reaping a return on your considerable investment, you are also delaying potentially sight-saving treatment for millions. We are ready to go. Waiting on you.”
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