“In the Bible itself we hear of blindness, of people who could not see with their eyes but only their hearts. For millennia, humanity has struggled to understand and overcome blindness. Yet today we have the scientific tools necessary to reach for a cure—to restore the physical sight so many of us take for granted to those who otherwise live in darkness…”
(Art Garfunkel might have put it even better when he wrote of our Call: “We are searching for nothing less than light.”)
The following year, at the 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I attended a dinner celebrating eleven winners of the Nobel Prize. Inspired by a sudden rash impulse—and given courage, I’m sure, by our blindness prize—I approached the host, Nature editor Philip Campbell, and poured out to him the rationale for ending blindness. To my amazement, after a brief silence that hung in the air, he generously allowed me to give an unscheduled after-dinner talk on our concept, what amounted to an extemporaneous mission statement.
Afterward, several people came over and introduced themselves, among them the great neuroscientist Dr. Eric Kandel. He later recommended me to be on the panel of the 2014 Charlie Rose television program about blindness (The Brain Series), on which I described our campaign, as well as my harrowing adventure on the New York subway system. The panel discussed the technological advances in the treatment of eye disease made by guest researchers on several fronts, who themselves explained developments in such areas as gene therapy, retinal prosthesis, and stem-cell therapy, such as for nerve regeneration.
Aware of my efforts concerning blindness, Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and head of the Davos Forum, elevated the End Blindness by 2020 campaign by making it a topic for its own dedicated panel session in 2014. That session featured Dr. Joshua Sanes and Dr. Alfred Sommer, two of the world’s leading medical scientists who are members of the scientific advisory board for the End Blindness by 2020 Prize. In one stroke, this raised the campaign to the level of international awareness among leaders in government, business, and technology. Momentum was building.
For the following year Professor Schwab expanded the structure of the panel, asking Susan Goldberg, editor in chief of National Geographic magazine, to serve as moderator, so as to give it even more weight at the forum. Researchers in the physiology of the eye at the very top of their fields participated in both forums. At that session, Susan asked me to present the objective of the End Blindness Prize. Later, Susan teamed Arthur and me up with a photographer to reenact our subway odyssey of fifty-five years earlier, as described in chapter 22. The resulting September 2016 National Geographic cover story, “The End of Blindness,” brought widespread attention to our cause. To further highlight the campaign, the famous—and blind—operatic tenor Andrea Bocelli performed at the 2015 plenary session.
The BBC World Service’s Outlook also devoted two programs to End Blindness by 2020. In 2018, the Public Broadcasting System of the Netherlands produced a television documentary describing the progress the End Blindness by 2020 campaign has made.
Our signpost, in short, has been seen. Our Call to end blindness forever has taken root in the public’s imagination, just as landing on the moon did a half century ago. Meanwhile, the well-publicized “bigness” of our ambition has helped immensely in recruiting the necessary infrastructure for our prize.
From the outset, my intent was to establish both a national governing council for the End Blindness Prize and a scientific advisory board to help determine the winners. I had hoped to people both with America’s leading lights of civic virtue and scientific and medical accomplishment, but I never dared dream that so many of those I asked to serve would agree so willingly. I truly am the luckiest man in the world to have the support of such as these.
Governing Council
· The Honorable Michael Bloomberg, founder and CEO, Bloomberg LP; philanthropist; three-term mayor of New York City
· Dr. William Brody, president emeritus, the Salk Institute and Johns Hopkins University
· The Honorable Bob Dole, statesman, United States Senator, Congressman
· The Honorable Elizabeth Dole, United States Senator, cabinet secretary, founder of the Elizabeth Dole Foundation
· Mr. Art Garfunkel, singer, poet, and actor; winner of eight Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award
· Dr. Morton Goldberg, chairman of the board, Foundation Fighting Blindness Clinical Research Institute
· Mrs. Susan Greenberg, educator, the White House, 1993–2001
· Mr. John McCarter, chairman emeritus of the Board of Regents, the Smithsonian Institution
· Dr. Peter McDonnell, William Holland Wilmer Professor of Ophthalmology; director, the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute
· The Honorable Michael Mukasey, eighty-first attorney general of the United States
· Mr. Jerry Speyer, founder, chairman, Tishman Speyer Properties
· In memoriam, David Rockefeller
Scientific Advisory Board
· Dr. Richard Axel, university professor, Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
· Dr. Constance Cepko, professor of genetics and ophthalmology, Harvard University
· Dr. John Dowling, professor of ophthalmology (neuroscience), Harvard University
· Dr. Carol Greider, Daniel Nathans Professor; director, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Johns Hopkins University; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
· Dr. Julia Haller, professor and chair, ophthalmology; ophthalmologist-in-chief, Wills Eye Hospital
· Dr. Eric Kandel, university professor, Department of Neuroscience; director, Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
· Dr. Joan Miller, chair, Department of Ophthalmology, Harvard University
· Dr. Jeremy Nathans, professor of molecular biology and genetics, neuroscience, and ophthalmology, Johns Hopkins University
·
