no cataract research allowed - by order of the health ministry!

Today I had the bad fortune to telephone a cataract researcher at the ophthalmology department of a university hospital.  I had been introduced to him as someone who could help us develop and test better cataract reversal eye drops, although I had also been told he was a cataract surgeon. 

When I spoke to him, he said to me: "All my research is on secondary cataract which often forms on the implanted plastic lens after the surgery.  But if you're proposing to do research on cataract of the natural lens, that's impossible.  The Health Ministry only approves surgery, and cataract research is NOT ALLOWED".  Effectively, the decision of the Health Ministry is consigning millions of people who can't have cataract surgery to blindness, and those who come out bad from the surgery to sub-standard vision.

Before I hung up, I did manage to tell him that there was NO WAY we were going to let this situation continue.  NO WAY.   And by God, we mean it.