May 15, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
07:18
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Researchers on the eye, especially on the retina, and in conquering at least some forms of blindness. | |
| And I'm really doing this as a public service. | |
| I have no financial interest in this or any other. | |
| It is just... | |
| This woman's work is remarkable. | |
| And if we can help people know about things that can help... | |
| I'd like to bring it to your attention, especially macular degeneration and this thing that will be available in about a year, Oculenz, O-C-U-L-E-N-Z, right? | |
| Is that the correct spelling? | |
| Yes. | |
| Dr. Linda Lamb is an associate professor at the USC Keck School of Medicine, and she helped restore vision in the eye. | |
| Eye fell on eye to fall about almost two years ago. | |
| And fell right on my eye. | |
| My glasses saved it, actually. | |
| Good thing I didn't wear... | |
| What do you call them? | |
| Contact lenses. | |
| Contact lenses, right. | |
| Exactly. | |
| I kept telling Dennis that his mom saved his eye because when your mom was alive, Dennis, you recounted that mom told you you looked better in glasses. | |
| And really, glasses prevented you from having a ruptured globe. | |
| We did fix your retina, but it would have been much worse without your glasses. | |
| By the way, I have been thanking her. | |
| Thank you. | |
| And I get a kick out of how much you got a kick out of the story. | |
| I once went on TV and I decided since nobody's in the studio just looking at a camera, I'll just take my glasses off and see what I look like without glasses. | |
| I'll watch a video of my appearance. | |
| It was CNN. | |
| And my mother called during the break and she said one thing. | |
| She said, put your glasses back on. | |
| And if your own mother thinks you look better in glasses, that's humbling. | |
| Sobering. | |
| Let's put it that way. | |
| But you're right. | |
| They saved it. | |
| Just in a nutshell, people don't know, unfortunately... | |
| What is the retina? | |
| So the retina is, imagine you have the eyeball, which is like a basketball, and if you line the inside of the basketball with saran wrap, that is the retina. | |
| The retina is fairly transparent. | |
| It is the sensory portion of your eye that allows you to see. | |
| It's like the film in the camera. | |
| So what happens in the retina, for example, we can get macular degeneration, which is a degenerative age-related change. | |
| As some people get older. | |
| And with macular degeneration, for example, blood vessels can grow and bleed and leak fluid. | |
| And in this condition, if retina specialists do not treat and stop the blood vessels from growing, the patients develop a scar in the center part of the vision. | |
| But there's dry and wet macular generation. | |
| And in the dry form, the blood vessels are not growing, but you still develop loss of pigment cells that support the retina. | |
| And even in that condition, the dry form, patients can lose their central vision. | |
| And so the device OcuLens was developed to help patients who've lost their central vision to be able to see what's underneath that area that's missing by projecting The area that they can't see into healthy retina in each eye. | |
| So the device was made actually in 2013 by the founders for their dad. | |
| The Freeman brothers, Michael Freeman and Mitch Freeman, developed this device to help their dad who was blind from macular degeneration to be able to see. | |
| And he was a retired Air Force general who went from flying F-15s to having... | |
| Severe difficulty just tying his shoelaces. | |
| And so the sons who've worked in technology developed this device really just to help their dad. | |
| And before the dad passed away, their dad asked the brothers to promise that they would put this device on the market. | |
| So it's really inspiring when I hear the story. | |
| When I first met the founders of the company, I was like, wow, this is amazing. | |
| They did this to help. | |
| They want to bring it to the rest of the world because they made a promise to the dad. | |
| I'm biased. | |
| I'm a retinal specialist. | |
| Let me ask you another question. | |
| Aside from macular degeneration, you have helped others conquer aspects of blindness. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| Yes. | |
| So, for example, well, as a retina specialist, we treat anything that is related to the retina And we also treat patients who've had trauma like you who've fallen. | |
| We've had patients with ruptured globe where the eye is cut open and we sew it back together and give them back their vision. | |
| But we also treat diabetes, retinal detachments. | |
| There's many, many retina conditions. | |
| We have inflammatory diseases. | |
| For example, like lupus and even tuberculosis can affect the eye, and even like Ebola virus can affect the eye, and even West Nile. | |
| So there's just many, actually thousands of diseases that can affect the retina. | |
| But one of the main diseases that's not very well treated right now is macular degeneration, because even if you have the wet or the dry form, patients still lose often their central vision. | |
| So, do you have a website? | |
| Can somebody see your work or contact you? | |
| What do you recommend? | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| So, if they're interested in learning about the device, they can just go to www.oculenz.com. | |
| That website tells you a lot about the device. | |
| The device should be available in early 2021. Slightly delayed because of COVID and supply chain issues. | |
| It was supposed to be out this year, but we should be out early next year. | |
| And then if they wanted just to learn about what I do, if you just Google Linda Lamb, L-I-N-D-A, last name L-A-M, USC, you'll be able to see about what types of work I do. | |
| But I'm really involved in, I guess, all aspects of vision. | |
| Particularly interested in Envision Rehabilitation. | |
| So I finished my MBA about four years ago from USC, and I got involved in nonprofit work. | |
| I'm on the board of directors at Braille Institute and at Envision Incorporated. | |
| Okay, listen, I want people to get in touch with you. | |
| You are a remarkable woman, Dr. Linda Lamb. | |
| Thank you so much. |
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