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

This was at the time when I made that post: About 12 months ago. The position of the "Health Ministry" has not changed since then.
This is because the Health Ministry in my locale is still following guidelines drafted around the year 2000, which stipulate that cataract surgery become the only method of treatment (although surgery is not a "treatment"). Before then, many cataract reversal eye drops had been developed around the world. Some of them were very effective in the lab, for example those developed at MIT in the US. Since cataract is a disease with multiple etiologies, these various eye drops, which pre-date lanosterol by decades, could have been used to build a therapeutic arsenal against the various forms of the disease. But at that time, the year 2000, in what appears to have been an international effort by the ophthalmology consortium to make sure that surgery remained the only option, development of cataract reversal eye drops ceased quite abruptly in virtually every country around the world, all at the same time. I even have a professor friend who led such a research team at one university and had succeeded in achieving temporary reversal, but in 2000, his group was 'disbanded' before clinical trials could start. Although some basic research by biochemists aimed at better understanding cataract has continued in the US, the ophthalmology profession continues to show little or no interest in applying any of their discoveries. This is unsurprising, since several of their members have admitted to me straight-out that "they don't want an alternative to surgery". The doctor who drafted the guidelines in my locale passed away recently, but his guidelines are still in force. Tweet