The Corrected View
The Corrected View
Visionary Journeys: Dr. Cary Herzberg on Shaping the Future of Ortho-K and Myopia Control
Embark on a visionary quest with Dr. Cary Herzberg, the architect of the AAOMC and a vanguard in Ortho-K and myopia control. Our latest episode is brimming with anecdotes and profound insights from Dr. Herzberg's odyssey in optometry; from the inception of the sophisticated contact lens technology we marvel at today, to the pivotal role of private practice and the mentorship that shapes budding optometrists. Witness the metamorphosis of a field once shrouded in skepticism, now gleaming with advancements and the promise of a myopia-managed future.
Dr. Herzberg regales us with tales of the AAOMC's storied past—an organization that grew from a seed of possibility into the mighty oak of professional development it represents today. Navigating through the evolution of Ortho-K lenses and the advent of myopia control, we uncover the intersection of technology and human touch that defines exceptional patient care. Discussions of the fellowship program reveal the dedicated individuals who have carved out a niche of expertise, underscoring the importance of specialization and the pursuit of excellence in optometry.
Our conversation doesn't shy away from the challenges and victories that have defined the journey of myopia control. From the FDA's nod to Ortho-K's liberating approach to vision correction, to the compelling shift towards preventative care in health systems, this episode is a testament to the relentless spirit of innovation within the optometry community. Join us for a riveting exploration of both the history and the horizon of eye care, where Dr. Herzberg's experiences and the shared passion for this craft culminate in a narrative that's not only enlightening but also a beacon for the future of vision health.
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Corrected View podcast. We are so thrilled to have you and I am honored to have our next guest Before we do our introduction. I'm Anith Pillay, with my co-host, dwight Barnes. We're both board members of AOMC and doing the Corrected View podcast. Board members of AOMC and doing the Corrected View podcast and man Dwight. I can't think of another guest that we have been so thrilled to have on an episode. Absolutely what a perfect guest to have with us.
Speaker 2:So yeah, as Anith said, welcome back to the Corrected View. That's Anith, I'm Dwight, like we always are, and we have a fantastic episode today. What we've got today is a guest who is a legend of the OrthoK community. He is legitimately on the orthokeratology Mount Rushmore. We are pleased to welcome Dr Kerry Herzberg.
Speaker 2:Now, anyone who's listening to this probably already knows who Dr Herzberg is, but in case you do not know, in case you haven't been to Vision by Design and if you haven't you should Dr Herzberg is a pioneer of Ortho-K. He is the founding father of the AAOMC, which is the American Academy of Ortho-K and Myopia Control, and if you're a guy like Anith and I who are members of the AAOMC, fellows of the AAOMC and people who go to Vision by Design and learn from that great organization, that makes him an incredibly important figure in our specialty that we love and that we practice every day. And he's also a super cool guy and a fun guy to have a conversation with. So we are thrilled to have him here, dr Kerry Herzberg. Kerry, welcome to the Corrected View. How are you?
Speaker 3:doing today. Well, thank you, dwight, it's great, it's good to be here. Can I just add one thing to your introduction?
Speaker 1:Please do.
Speaker 3:Yes, when you talk about OrthoK, you're talking about myopia control. So not only are we pioneers in the field of OrthoK, but myopia control. We were the original myopia control people. There was nobody else doing this stuff, and so it's the ortho keratology doctors that were doing that. So that's where it all began. You know, back in for me back in the early eighties.
Speaker 2:Well said, well said and and we're absolutely thrilled to have you on what's going on in your world lately.
Speaker 3:Well, currently I'm, I'm, I, I'm working for Johnson Johnson as a consultant and I also have a practice that I'm working in a group practice now, which is a first for me because I practiced solo for over 50 years and now I get to practice with two other colleagues who are just amazing. So I've merged my practice in with them and we didn't go the private equity route at all, we went the other way. So you know we're looking to eventually add more young doctors to the practice and build this thing and continue it on. You know Private practice is the core of optometry and you know we have to keep. You know, hopefully keep that strong.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:I would imagine in a setting like that, it gives you a great opportunity to mentor some younger doctors as well, right, oh yeah, and you work with the schools too, but, yes, it's wonderful.
Speaker 3:And then you get the insights of the other doctors that I'm working with. What one of them is actually one of the dry experts around? So she's, she's pretty amazing. I've learned things that I, you know, I didn't know, so you know it, it it's nice to you know, just to be here and to watch the technology. Right, guys, the technology is amazing that we deal with today and you know these captures on these lab images now with the firefly and everything else is just like I'm just.
Speaker 2:My mouth is open, stunned and how easy it is to do this so, and looking at the way that students are coming out of schools, people who have graduated in the last few years, like I'm younger than you, carrie and anithi- younger than I am and there was no ortho everybody's younger than me. What do, right, well even when I came through school, there was no ortho K, there was no myopia control. Oh, there still is Come on Seriously In the schools.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, we take a podcast on this one right.
Speaker 2:Sure it's just myopia.
Speaker 3:Let's just not isolate the topic. Myopia in general is not being discussed in schools. These young kids coming out today are looking. You know they get it. They get it more than any other generation I've ever been exposed to as far as myopia and ortho k they're they're gung-ho to learn this thing and they have to do it.
Speaker 3:Secondary you know after school, which is a shame so it's, yeah, it is because it's it's really inbred, some of the biases that we see in our profession, which are shared by some of the older doctors. I can tell you stories about being at the AOA conference and listening to optometry students tell me how unsafe it was to put an ortho-K lens on the eye. This was in the 2000s already and they sound like ophthalmology residents. It was interesting.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's been an interesting journey, I will say, having students in our practice now it has gotten better for sure. Like they have myopic control clinics, that now they might be electives and we need to maybe change some of that, but when they come in as fourth years as externs into my clinic that they're aware of it at least, unlike when we started practicing we had to kind of fight the mold and then incorporate our practice and learn as doctors instead of as students. So it's getting better. We're getting there for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is, but the thing is come on. I've been at this thing now for over 40 years, and you know, I would have never imagined it would take this long to do this I mean seriously and we're still not there. So that's just amazing for me. You know, what is it going to take to push it over, finally to get this thing done?
Speaker 2:Right, and it's not a lack of data, it's not a lack of evidence, it's just a lack of being wholeheartedly embraced.
Speaker 3:Priorities- yeah, priorities. I mean we've done a great job with medical, but this is the core of medical. I mean preventive.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about prevention because, that's my theme preventive care.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:That's really where our profession can really shine is in prevention. So let's do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to make one correction. You said Dr Karen Herzberg is on the Mount Rushmore of ortho-K and myopic control. I like to flip that and say he's the godfather. There we go.
Speaker 2:That works. That works absolutely, so let's dive into it, yeah let's dive in.
Speaker 2:So we got a handful of questions for you, kerry, and, as we were discussing before we went live, they are some very, very meaty topics that I think we can really dive into and we can't wait to hear your views on it. So the first one is, for some of the folks who are listening, who maybe haven't had an opportunity to listen to you speak and hear about your story, tell us how you got started in eye care, what got you interested in eye care, and then, more specifically, what really got you started with a big interest in orthoperitology and myopia control.
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, I have a three generation optometrist, so my grandfather was an optometrist.
Speaker 3:one of the first ones in illinois, and my father of course, and my brother also optometrist. I have uncles that practice optometries, those kind of assumed. You know from the, from the birth here, that I was going to do go up into optometry, uh, so that's kind of like it was a given. But the other part of it, you know what got me really into this thing, this ortho-K thing, was just plainly I was looking for ways to practice preventive care, even back into the 80s when I first started ortho-K, and even before that, because, if you guys remember, the soft lenses had made their moment in 1972. And with the Bosh and Lohman, I remember that in 1972.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's all before you, but you know that was the time of the soft lens generation began. The era of soft lenses began, and so into the 80s, then the patients were being fit with soft lenses. It wasn't, you know, the rigid lens industry was fading at that point very big time, even though we had gas permeable lenses until the late 70s, you know, the first gas permeable lenses. It just it was going. You know, the few of us that were doing it were ones that really had started doing it and the rest of the doctors that had graduated after the soft lens introduction weren't very, you know, they didn't stay with it. They fit the soft lenses.
Speaker 3:And the problem with with the, with the soft lenses and single vision glasses, everything else at the time, was the patient's vision got worse. So we, you know I, was looking for ways of how can I, you know, help these patients, because it was to me. I mean, I don't know how you guys feel about it, but if I've watched my patients get the vision getting worse, I mean I'm doing something wrong. It's like in Chinese medicine where the doctor takes the blame for it. And I do because it's my job to make sure your vision doesn't get worse. I mean, think about it. We're doing this thing and our patients are getting worse. You know what the heck Are we really helping?
Speaker 3:You know, I mean, it's something you know, it's something to really deal with. So I had to do something because I couldn't deal with the status quo as it was, and it still is today the fact that you watch deteriorating vision. I had to find ways to do that. At the time, we had rigid lenses, which you thought might be possible help for this. We had Ortho-K. I've always been in a position where I felt like let's make a meaningful difference in our patients' lives. You know as much as we can and I thought what's the best thing is freedom from daily wear of contact lenses or glasses. Right, that's the coolest thing around.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things that's so interesting about that, that approach and that story, when I, when I hear someone like you who was involved in the very early stages of it, you who was involved in the very early stages of it is, you know, for us, for me and for aneth, we had the advantage of knowing, before we ever started fitting an ortho keratology lens for my opiate control, knowing that it helped, knowing that it works and that it helped and you guys were working on an assumption that it worked and that it helped right it's such a different twist of events and I try to put myself in that perspective and I can't quite imagine the scenario of doing it.
Speaker 2:Tell us a little bit about what that was like. Saying this might work, let's see if we can figure it out.
Speaker 1:It was like the Wild West.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was because there's only a few of us around and they thought we had horns and tail. They were looking at us like you know, you're the, you must. You're evil. You're evil what you're doing, I mean you're bad. You're bad for uptime. We were told stop this. You're bad for optometry. We wanted to get optometry, wanted to rise up to the right, to its reputation as a reputation, as a, as a medical especially, and we were ruining that for them. I mean, they couldn't stand it because, you know, we're trying, we're teaching all these cool stuff in the schools and now you, you guys, are doing what you know. This is bad. Stop, you know, stop right.
Speaker 3:The thing, the thing dwight, and that got me going on this thing, was I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. I mean, as far as my patients, that the, even the patients that had, you know, discontinued ortho k, they never really, have never really got back to their original prescription. We started with, you know, back in the, and this was done with old technology. We'll get talking about the changes that happened over time. So, and the other thing was God, it's such a cool thing to do.
Speaker 3:I can't believe that other doctors don't get, don't want to do this, you know, for their patients. I mean, what is cooler? I mean, we've been working on the medical end. You know they had RK LASIK, whatever it is that we're doing, you know, trying to do the same thing, right, patient freedom. And here we were doing it with a contact lens and I still, to this day, I tell my patients, I say, well, how does this work? I said, well, it's magic, don't you know? You know, because for me it still is magic, no matter what we talk about it still is that process.
Speaker 3:It's such an amazing thing.
Speaker 2:And it gift, and it's fired up a lifetime of passion for me that you know that has no end. And the smile on that patient's face at their first visit, after wearing it a day or a several day visit, and they're reading that line, and they're reading way, way down the chart after they were. You know a minus four, or what have you when you started. I mean, it doesn't get old, does it?
Speaker 3:no, the parents are looking at you with reverence, right. Just cheer reverence for what you've done. They can't believe they in fact they'll listen to you talk about it, right.
Speaker 1:And what?
Speaker 3:you're going to do and they, you know, I don't know if they truly believe you, but they're going to go with you anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And the other thing about it is you asked the question about the doctors and how we got into it. The patients are the real heroes. I mean, they brought their kids in right to us, they did it themselves and they had the faith in us to do this. I mean, where else do you? You know a lot of times in medicine that won't happen a lot, but they gave it to us and they were rewarded. The most fantastic story of all, they got rewarded. Whatever they paid for it. It was a minor amount compared to what the reward was, because we saved vision Countless times, thousands and thousands and thousands of times.
Speaker 2:In my own practice, it is the best kept secret in eye care.
Speaker 3:Oh, still not nearly enough. People know about it, right?
Speaker 2:No, that's right, it's sad that it's sad that we have to tell them that this thing exists, that they haven't already heard about it when they come into our offices.
Speaker 3:I know, and there's that's. That is a story that's littered with all kinds we may get into it, littered with all kinds of things, you know, all kinds of disappointments for this field.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean that was I literally said that today in clinic, or an o3k console, that, um you know that we eventually uh move forward with, because I was explaining the process and the patient was what, like this seems crazy, I mean, and I stopped and I said sounds like magic, doesn't it? And this many years of doing it, I still think it's magic. And that was incredible I have no other way to describe it. It was really great. I agree, you know it's getting a little more awareness, um, in the public, but obviously we we need to do more, but I'm glad that we're making the progression that we are. So, and you kind of led into this. So thank you for that lead-in, gary. Um, how have you seen, from when you started as the ortho k guru, as we call you the godfather right, how has it changed over time? What have you seen? Oh, yeah, there's been. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's been incredible.
Speaker 3:Uh, we began with uh, of course, fitting flatter than flat. You know, flatter k lenses, just fitting it flat, and then watching the fact that you couldn't do that, very, you couldn't correct much prescription, because guess what happened to the lens after you went too flat? It went up, you know, yeah, didn't center anymore, sure of course you had to have centration right. So we went from there and you know it really began with the process with uh al fontana in the 1970s to interrupt you.
Speaker 1:So at that time you were just doing just pure reverse geometry, not like the curves that we have now it wasn't even reverse geometry no no reverse geometry curves, it was just a flat uh large for the time
Speaker 3:yeah, flatter base curve with, uh, you know, no, no reverse geometry at all. At that point you would change a series of lenses along the way until you finally, you know, could culminate. Maybe you got the adapter, half or two adapters, if you were lucky. But you also induced the stigmatism along the way too, because the lenses weren't fitting ideally, and still the patients loved them. I mean, they wouldn't give them up, even those lenses, back in the day. And you began I didn't, but some of the doctors began with PMMA lenses they were doing this with Wow.
Speaker 3:With kids filming or a mix of kids and adults, or well, yeah, there was a lot we were doing both. Yeah, the adults would would, you know under under 40 would do a lot of it too, you know we would. We would lifestyle choices, but low myopes and at that time guys are a lot more low myopes than they are today. By the way, there are a couple of higher prescriptions, that's all you know.
Speaker 3:watching that you talk about preventive care watching that window open up and seeing the denial in our own community and hearing about likewise stories about diabetes and obesity that also in the 80s occurred and also they didn't.
Speaker 3:They were afraid researchers are afraid to come out and say anything because they're afraid that they were going to be laughed at. But they finally began proving in the 90s that this stuff was actually happening. These trends were occurring and you were seeing increases in all of this, myopia included. So, yeah, so, watching that happen and the denial in the profession, we had people I mean, I don't want to name names, but they're, you know, universities, whole universities dedicated the fact that they were saying this is all you know, it's not genetic, it's universities, whole universities dedicated the fact that they were saying this is all you know, it's not genetic, it's all genetics, it's not environmental.
Speaker 3:And then we're sitting there, you know, knowing it's environmental guys, because you don't get this stuff from genetics alone. I mean we were seeing some weird stuff and higher prescriptions than ever experienced before, and from parents that didn't have myopia, you know. So we knew it wasn't. You know, we knew the university professors were wrong and we just had to prove it. That's the magic of clinicians, that we are the drivers of everything. We find it first and then they go and have to prove it for us, but we know it works. You just have to prove why it works.
Speaker 3:So clinicians drive the whole process.
Speaker 1:We've seen studies that have been done during COVID of how much children have progressed. They were at home and there's so much more screen time and et cetera. So this next Dwight.
Speaker 2:Before we go to that. I mean it's real quick. So when you're talking about the ortho-K changing over time and starting with just a non-reverse, geometry, just a flat RGP lens Right. Geometry just a flat rgp, lens right, what? What were the drivers that kind of caused that to move from just a flat rgp to more of a reverse geometry? Something that kind of sort of resembles what we do today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's ingenuity really. We had to figure out. You know what it would take to center the lens. You know, keep it uncentered right, and so that began. And I was mentioning al fontana did the work. Uh, you know, back in the early, in the early 70s, we came up with the first reverse geometry concepts um, okay and so that was then an application, and and we were the ones, of course, that you know now, you, what you see reverse geometry and everything, scleral lenses, whatever it is we had also had to deal with asian eyes, which are those old, you know oval shaped eyeballs.
Speaker 3:Nothing centers from asian eye, unless it's got reverse geometry, as far as rigid lenses are concerned. So all of this had to come together, you know, and of course the ok3 was the first one and stoyan with context, the pioneer of all this stuff, with the verse ok3 they called it, and from there it went into the lens that really changed everything was tom ream and and, and my good friend sammy el haj, with the four curved lenses. I don't mention Sammy's name, he's going to get really upset here, Sure.
Speaker 3:Sammy will be calling tonight or whenever the thing goes on. Anyway, you know, sammy did some amazing things in the field. But back in 1994, and it brought for all of us it really changed everything, because at this point I was just a dabbler in it. I mean, I was doing it but I wasn't doing it. You know, as like I'm doing it later on, but we got the far curved lenses. We could suddenly correct four adapters of myopia just overnight that was amazing that was amazing yes, that was huge and it wasn't just happening here either.
Speaker 3:We thought, you know, this is just a US phenomenon because ortho-K started in the US, right, but it's, you know, this was, you see, the same thing happening in, like the Philippines and East Asia, where they began to apply these lenses and do the same things we were doing and watching the dynamics of a four curve lens, which is really the beginning of the modern era of ortho-K. It was really the beginning of the modern era of ortho-K. What was?
Speaker 1:the driving force of getting into those designs, of getting into the four curve? Was it just an understanding of saying I'm looking at the ortho-K retainer on the eye, it's not standing properly, or was it the introduction of topography? You utilize more?
Speaker 3:What was that driving force? Yeah, obviously getting a lens centered was a big deal, but the thing was also that the OK3 lens was a reasonably effective product from context, but it had a point where it couldn't correct anymore. Again, it had a large reverse curve and a peripheral curve with the central 6mm or 5.8, whatever it was optic zone or sometimes larger, but the lens couldn't, you know, it couldn't treat higher RXs. It would kind of die away after two and a quarter adapters of myopia.
Speaker 2:Do you remember the rough timeframe of when that OK3 lens was kind of coming into place, of just the flat Big time it came into?
Speaker 3:the 80s the late 80s, mid to late 80s is what it really had, and that changed things too. I mean, you didn't have to worry about that lens decentering upwards anymore because you had the OK3 product to make that happen. You know, at the same time, I remember my first topographer was an Isis, which was $60,000 back in the 80s. I mean, this is not an expense. Think about today's dollars. Right, that was such a great investment. I had a practice that people wanted to have that done. They wanted to have a topography. We left it and they could see it from the waiting room and they said what is that?
Speaker 3:That looks too cool. I want it. I mean, you don't really need it. We're doing so. Yeah, the topography development was, you know, again something that's, and I think this is all you know. It's obviously all key together. But at the other time and I've written articles about this the lathing at the other, the accuracy and lathing right, the new development of materials, it's all to you know, all the whole thing industry-wide and practice-wide came together at that point high oxygen materials that came out, that became available, and the increases, improvement in lathing, which were amazing. You know, the diamond laser, they could turn that product out and uh, we're still banging.
Speaker 3:You know we're still developing those. I mean it hasn't changed. It's like they said, you know, back in the early 1900s, that there was a term that they had reached. They had known everything they could know about physics, right, and then, of course, quantum mechanics. Everything else occurred. This is ortho case, a lot like that too, because you have to. Things are, you know, as we've been referring to, things are changing even today and you have to really stay on on top. Know, as we've been referring to, things are changing even today and you have to really stay on top of that with these new developments because they're going to change the way you can, you know that outcome with your patients and what you can do. Look at the prescriptions we can handle today.
Speaker 3:High amounts of astigmatism, high amounts of myopia, safely, you know this is, I mean, you know, coming from where I came from, this is like my God, you know this is, this is amazing. But yeah, so the whole thing, you know, came together at that point and, you know, allowed us then to, you know, correct up to four adapters, myopia, sometimes more, and then the other part that we've been, you know, we kind of talked about this early on, but the other part that had to happen too is the industry. Eddie chow and I used to discuss this, uh, back in the 90s with nerf, that uh, you know they, we needed to know the parameters of the lens and we weren't, they weren't sharing, you know, these designs.
Speaker 3:They wouldn't share that that they. And then how can you fix something you know you're looking at? You're a doctor here but as an ortho keratologist you're also someone who gets hands-on a lot of times with the with how that lens is made and development, how it fits right, and you want to be able to fix a problem. You don't want to have to talk to somebody on the phone to try to fix the problem you're looking at. You want to be able to do it yourself. But you know, not knowing a parameter, how can you? You know it's like crazy time.
Speaker 2:You know and hand in hand with that. Curious if you if you have a consultant fix it for you. It may get fixed, but you didn't learn anything about fixing that problem right. The problem is going to come along again and you're going to handle it the same way. You're going to ask a consultant to fix it. You don't get a chance to manipulate those parameters with a custom design and say, okay, how did that work for me, what could I do better next time?
Speaker 3:I mean absolutely, and the thing is that you can become a better doctor. I know today we're looking at one of the reasons why ortho-K we're going to talk about this later on but why reason why ortho-K isn't mainstream is because it's hands-on. You know it's a even to this day. You get a patient, you don't you know. When it comes out great, you're taking a big hey, yeah you know, work but it doesn't always do.
Speaker 3:I mean even you know it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes it does. You know it doesn't work out, and I think those are some of the greatest moments to share. You know, sometimes I'll tell a patient I said I just didn't. You know a patient I've been treating for years and talk about it and say I just didn't just take a. You're going to have to bear with me because I'm going to have to fix this thing, but those are the best moments.
Speaker 3:Those are the times you know doctors don't like uncertainty, but here you got it and, boy, that's the one I learned the most.
Speaker 2:Well, it's living tissue, right? It's not a computer algorithm, it's somebody's actual human cornea that you're trying to manipulate. Well, right along the lines of that same question, kerry, and this one's loaded. It's a huge question, but it's also a really, really important question that I've heard you speak on this a little bit, and I know Anith has as well, but I love hearing you speak on it and I think the audience will love it. Tell us about the origins of the AAOMC, where it started, what drove you guys to start it and how it evolved to kind of what we see it as today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great story. First off, we have to kind of backtrack, go back to 1955, because that's what really went our, you know. I think it's important for all of us to realize our heritage and our ancestors, right when you came from, you know, and to really honor that. So Newton Wesley, in 1955, founded the National Library Research Foundation, which was really the beginning of a group that did a lot of research into ortho-K. Newton was one of the most famous eye doctors that ever lived. I mean, he was my mentor, I acted as his, I was his president for the group for a while.
Speaker 3:He actually invented the modern contact lens, the corneal lens. That was back in 1948 with TUI contact lens, the corneal lens so that was back in 48 with tui, and he actually barnstormed around the country to uh, to, you know, to get the idea of wearing contact lenses. It was a foreign idea in the 50s because people didn't wear, you know, most people didn't wear them and they thought is this even safe? So he had he was on the tonight show. He had a rabbit. He had rabbits that they used their corneas, you know, to fit the who was the host.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry who was the host. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:Who was the host? Oh, johnny Carson and Jack Parr. I think Jack Parr was even back in that day. It was Jack Parr. Johnny came later. So Jack Parr was doing it at a time when Newton brought his rabbits on and there was one rabbit that he spared.
Speaker 3:It wasn't Harvey they called the rabbit and he would bring that on the show you know that to show them what. You know how this worked. So, anyway, so he did that, he did the work for us basically and he founded the you know the group national eye research foundation basically was doing the research for Wesley Jessen, which was a name that became a soft lens name, but at the time they had the plastic contact lens company in Wabash Avenue in Chicago that did like 90% of all the contact lenses in the world at one point were done at Wabash. So there were of course PMMA lenses and so that's where that began and Newton developed, you know, again through the National Library of Superstition, this awareness of ortho-K.
Speaker 3:And we weren't a lot of doctors, you know, maybe at the high point we had like 200 doctors or so as members and we had a bunch of fellows, the FIOS, which is an international fellowship, the international ortho-keratology section.
Speaker 3:But that was really our, you know, the beginning, the precursor for all of us, and so I became active in that one at about the same time that in the 90s, when the, when the you know the reams lens came out, spent a lot of time with that group, eventually got to running that organization, and that was really set the stage for everything to happen after that. So we really, you know, owe a lot of things to them, you know to these guys that, and the gals that did this work for us back with NERF. So, consequently, back in the late 90s, I actually had to leave the National Library Research Foundation because Newton and I didn't agree. Newton had a giant ego, and so when it became important for me to actually have control of the organization because we were making huge decisions, we were working on things that were just crazy times. We were talking about a fellowship in glaucoma back in the late 90s for optometry.
Speaker 3:I had the doctors. I had all the teachers lined up that would have supported that. We were going to do some really cool stuff, but I couldn't do it without having some control over the organization. Newton was never prepared to. These are long track record with us of never allowing that to happen. So I had to leave and that was kind of like you know you're, you're carrying a child, but you can't deliver the child. So we did, we did everything, we. We actually came when we came into Nerf. We actually solved some of their financial issues, put them on the positive side for the first time in a long time. But it didn't work out. So I was gone and out of there.
Speaker 3:And so here I am. It's back in 2022. I'm on my deck. I have we have a place out in Colorado. This is gorgeous. And I'm on the deck sunning myself with my wife. You know we're sitting on the easy chairs just enjoying the day.
Speaker 3:And I got a call from Bob Cody at CNH and he says because there's the GOS was going to go on and because of the fact that I was not really into that, I mean, you know you have that experience right where you have the dejection, the letdown that you know, you tried to do this stuff and it didn't happen, so I was not involved with it. I wasn't going to go to GOS. And so Bob says you know, you got to go. We got our tickets, every bachelor's paying for the whole thing. We got a hotel in Toronto. You got to come, you know. And so I said, ok, I guess I'm coming.
Speaker 3:So we went to the GOS, the first GOS, which is just electric at that at that point and, as it turned out, they had already decided they were going to draft me to do this. I remember walking around the meeting and people would look at my name badge and say, oh, you're Kerry Herzberg, and I would. People I didn't even know who they were, Right, wow, so so long about the Saturday night which we had the CN Tower in Toronto, if you guys have ever been, but Bashalom did a spread there. They had two floors of that thing covered with food all the way around it on two floors, everything you can imagine. God knows how much they spent on that thing. So I was taken aside by a couple of the folks and said you know what we want you to? We're going to start this organization tomorrow. We want you to do this for us Because I had had a track record with NERF. A lot of people knew me. I was behind back to doctors and gave them support, whatever they needed. So they had that record going forward and they wanted me to do this for this new group. So I said, sure, you know, we did that.
Speaker 3:So at the end of the GOS the first GOS we had a meeting after it concluded, where they set the whole world stage up, including there was supposed to be an international group. Brian Holden was supposed to run that thing as far as the governance group on the top, and then each of these countries would have their own organization. So we were the OrthoCaryotology Academy of America that was founded later on. But actually what happened was there were about 25 guys that stood up when I took the lead and said, yes, we're going to do something with the US, and they supported that effort. That said, yes, we're going to be involved with this thing. Actually, it turned out that it wasn't anybody but me that was going to do anything. But that's the way things go. You know, most of those 25 people you never saw again, you know. But so we had it right At that point. We had the. You know Canada had their own group, Asian countries, of course. Australia was already active. Their group had been there for quite a while, since the 1980s themselves. They were the longest oldest ortho-K group.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I went back home and started figuring out how is this going to happen. The problem with this whole thing was that there were very competent people around that didn't want to take a chance to put this thing together. They didn't have too many unknowns and I was the kind of person I've always been. This way. I said you know what, if something doesn't work out, we'll fix it on the fly. As I found out later on, there's very few people can actually do that. You know what I mean. Actually, we'll do that, you know, because that's kind of you know, it's having a lot of faith in things. But that's how I think and that's how I do things. I said, okay, we'll start this out. If we find a problem, then we'll go and fix it. So I put everything together from scratch the bylaws, everything. Bylaws were a cookbook thing I bought online and the lawyer that I got was one of my lawyers locally. That was a real estate attorney, but he was able to help me enough to get this thing started with the.
Speaker 3:You know, setting up a not-for-profit.
Speaker 3:We had our first meeting and I chose the board of directors. We had our first meeting down in Seco in February I think it was of that year, and that's when we sat down and started the whole thing, accepted the group. You know the bylaws and everything like that set the standard up. That's how the group began. But there were lots of things that happened, you know, after that. That were interesting things.
Speaker 3:Yet One of the things we did was we set the quorum level too high and we couldn't get enough people to do a quorum. So we eventually found out. You know we eventually did get there, but we found out there was another way to do that, you know, without having to worry about having enough people there, we could just go around it. But we didn't know, we weren't savvy to that at the time, but that you know, things like that happen. So we finally had a quorum. It didn't happen right away, and you know.
Speaker 3:Then the thing moved on, obviously, you know, and you know then the thing moved on, obviously, you know we had our first real meeting at the University of Houston in 2004. It was funded by Bosch and Lohm. They came up with a $10,000 grant, which is great. We were down in Houston Sammy was down there. Norm Leach was our scientific chair. You know our first board of directors included Stu Grant, who's passed away, and then John Reinhart and a bunch of other people that actually you know the original board, roger Tabb, who also was famous in the field of ortho-K, and then David Davison was our guy online. You know he's our internet guy and website guy and he was great Ortho-Knet.
Speaker 3:If you ever were familiar with that, that was his website. You know he was really doing that kind of thing, you know, before we started with our group. So we got him involved with that. Joe collins was our promoter. He was joe is a promoter promoters with his exodus group. So we went down to houston. We had uh like 35, 40 people that came to that meeting. It was very successful. We held, held it right in Houston itself and we used their lab down there and the contact lens lab and we had all the equipment, the binoculars, everything else was there, the slit lamps, the cameras. It was beautiful. It worked out really well.
Speaker 1:I mean, to come from those origins. I was so amazed because almost every vision by design I get to hear stories of what it was like back in the day and now to see how organization is and how the conference is. I mean it's got to be very fulfilling for you to see of how it all started to now where it is and, granted we, there's more growth that we need to do, but it's got to be satisfying for you to see something oh yeah, and if it is, and the thing is that you got to understand here is that we we didn't have a lot of members at the time, I think we had less than 100, but those members were diehards.
Speaker 3:If I asked them, if, if I said jump, they'd say how high? If I said do you want to go through a wall? How thick is the wall? That kind of thing. They'd do almost anything for us. So you guys might not be aware of this, but we had you know. At the same time the CRT was going on with Paragon and they were recording refractive therapy. They didn't like ortho-K, they wouldn't become part of our organization All right, this is really an embarrassment.
Speaker 2:Yes, I went to them in 2002.
Speaker 3:I went to PM Hawkins and said you guys got to join us. This is crazy. I said okay, you don't like the name OrthoK? Well, join us. Have so many members in, Go change the board and change the name. I don't care, but join us.
Speaker 1:They wouldn't do it and they.
Speaker 3:They had competing meetings. Wow, who are? I never heard that before. Yes, and now they were supporters. Yes, but that that happened in 2007, but okay, so you guys don't even know this. Yeah, we survived because of our membership. They came and they couldn't. You know, no matter how much more they had money, we didn't have any money. I mean, seriously, we're out of pocket for everything. We charged dues, but we didn't have any. The funding wasn't there. It's always been a problem, right, the funding. So we didn't have that. They had all the money, but we won. They closed down. They couldn't compete with us. Can you imagine? Wow?
Speaker 1:And it's got to be great that we have this partnership with them now. But to see where it started off wow, yeah, it became.
Speaker 3:Cooper Vision. Right, but yeah, pm came to us in 2007 and said can we join you? This is like, after all that we've been through and I said what took you so long?
Speaker 1:But it's funny in my inauguration into the organization, like incoming to vision by design, I see of how much they uh paragon and now cooper vision, how they support us. But it's interesting to see, like all the awards that it took to get to this point and and that was solely on on yourself and your colleagues at that time. So so I always love to hear those stories. And one thing I want to get to now is because you led into this a little bit of where we started. So now, where do you think it's going? Where do you see this specialty you might say a standard of care, but I still consider it a specialty when do you see it going in the future of myopic control? What does it look like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll give you something that I've been sticking with for the longest time. I used to tell Paragon about that too. They didn't believe me. They thought everybody's going to do coronary refractive therapy. I said nope, because if you look at the numbers when you, you know the doctors that are doing right, the majority, 80% of the fits, 80% of the work is being done by 20% of the doctors.
Speaker 3:The serious stuff myopia control will be handled by just a small part of us. It'll be a lot larger than what we've had before, certainly because you know we have what 30,000 optometrists but it will be just a small part of it that will actually be doing the serious thing. What I mean by that is you got to think orthodontia and how that works out. It's so important now that optometry gets specialization. Okay, because of this, because of other areas, because we need the AOA, we need state organizations, even more importantly, to recognize the fact that we can specialize and we can advertise, specially because this is where we're going to lie with this thing. Most of the myopia is going to be done. Serious myopia is going to be done by a few of us and it's going to be a niche thing still, orthocape being part of that.
Speaker 3:You're going to see doctors doing this stuff, but it's please, it's going to be just like you know, it's not. They're not doing it the way it should be done. You know what I mean. They're doing it but they're not really doing it. It's like anything else is I've got this degree rest of us that really specialize, and the reason why we need specialization here, because you look at ophthalmology, what they've done right With all the different specialists, then we can really grow this thing like it's supposed to be grown, because the serious ones, the doctors, are really going to be doing this axial lengths, everything else, seeing their patients more often, taking care of them are going to be those doctors.
Speaker 3:And one of the problems with all this in our field, of course if we can mention this as vision care plans a lot of doctors think care as far as vision care, in other words, they do only what the scope of the vision care is, instead of what the scope should be as an optometrist or what the patient really needs, and very few doctors are brave enough to go tell their patients. You know, no, I'm not just doing this, this is what you really need to do.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:They're asking the wrong questions. They're saying how do I get this under the umbrella of a vision?
Speaker 3:Right, no, how do I do it? It does not fit. Exactly it doesn't fit.
Speaker 2:You have to you have to treat it as what it is, which is its own unique entity.
Speaker 3:It's preventive care. How are you going to, how are you going to do preventive care without education, right? How are you going to do education without being paid to do it, right? You know for free all the time.
Speaker 3:I mean we can we do it because of ortho K, because we get a big reimbursement which you guys earn all the time. You know it's well. You know patients pays as well worth what they're paying for that. Because you're giving them, you know, all this dedicated time, my God's amazing. You know, when you think about it, you know we fought. Ok, another story, all right.
Speaker 1:Here we are.
Speaker 3:Here we are in one of our. You know the year, I think is 2007, 2008. And I got the president of B&O up there I'm not going to name names Telling all of us that we should charge a thousand dollars or less for ortho-K. All right, because they, they did, they did surveys and studies and said if you drop it below a thousand dollars, you're going to sell more lenses. Okay, so they're telling us, but from our podium right I got up in the middle of that said no way this is happening. You're all wrong.
Speaker 3:The president of basha loam yeah I got called on the carpet over this thing. You know he I go make a personal visit for this to apologize to him, because he was going to cut us off Right, I was. That's why we are who we are today, because I've always stood up for the doctors, always supported you guys, and our group does that. You know, supporting the doctors, right? That's what we're all about. That's why somebody who comes to our conferences belongs to this group. It's a hug. It's a group hug from everybody they share. That's not an accident. This is a family. This started the same way as a family and you guys are continuing on our family traditions.
Speaker 2:Well, going back to that story, kerry, you know, when you look at the fees and of course we don't talk specific fees on these, but when you talk at whatever that fee is that you know a doctor feels is appropriate, there's a lot that goes into it.
Speaker 3:Right, there certainly is a material cost, but that's the smaller part.
Speaker 2:Then there's your expertise, the education that you've gained to be able to do it, and then, of course, there's your clinic time. Right, you have to have your clinic open. You got to pay your staff and you got to do all of that Well somebody is a representative as a content lens company coming up and telling you what to charge when they have no idea what your costs are and have your costs and your time right exactly.
Speaker 3:We have just wanted just to justify the wire. We look at the freaking wire. Yeah right, like an orthodontia, we look at the wire. They don't look at the wire, they talk about wires. No, I mean, you know it's, it's unique to optometry. Yes, you get into this discussion and it's ridiculous, because it's exactly time. It's your expertise, it's your staff. It's your expertise, it's your staff time. My God, you're paying all these people well, I hope, and they're doing that job for you. And the intense time. You know you're on call for this patient 24 seven if something happens. I mean, I'm right there in the middle of the night if I had to be, and those patients also well, the parents of those patients when we're talking.
Speaker 2:You know, younger myopia control patients also have twice as many questions as the average patient.
Speaker 3:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:And all that time, if you were to add it up, answering, you know where there's email or a phone call or what have you. You know it's, it really does add up and it all of that goes into, you know, establishing what would be a fair, a fair reimbursement for the service that you're providing.
Speaker 3:You know what is it worth when you go into a patient and they're coming into you and they're. You know they're, they're nearsighted, but they did. They did it in grad school. Their their child is in the chair.
Speaker 3:They've got a higher prescription than they do at eight years of age. And these parents are really worried. And what is that worth when you tell you know, when you speak to the parent and say you know what, you don't need to worry about that anymore, because I'm going to take care of this. If I think there's a problem, I'm going to come to you and tell you to worry. Up until then you leave it on my shoulders. That's what I'm here for. That's what you come to my office for. What is that worth? That's like the MasterCard moment. That's like suddenly you've taken a patient who's thinking nothing but victimhood and nothing, but there's nothing I can do about this.
Speaker 2:My kid's going to be a victim and get a loser is going blind, and you've taken that and given them a different picture. Entirely well, you empower the parent. Yes to to fix this problem that exists right to, to slow it down, stopping in its tracks, potentially right the best part of this dwight.
Speaker 3:Now the patient's 25, 30 years old, because I have patients multiple generations you know 10, multiple decades. Sometimes the parent still comes in right with them and they're sitting there with the patient they come and visit. I hug them because it's like I haven't seen you in so long, because we used to see them all the freaking time. And we, being orthopedologists, you know I've had medical professionals sit in the chairs watching this thing happen. Professional sitting in the chairs watching this thing happen he says I wish I could do what you do again.
Speaker 3:We've lost this, yeah, this kind of contact with the patient. You know where you really care for the patient and they don't care for them year after year after year. And they know, you know your family right, they've lost all that and they're looking like that. I need that, I want to get that, so, anyway. So you're sitting there right in the chair, the patient's in their chair, you're looking at your axial length numbers, this patient's sitting in their chair. You're looking at your axial length numbers. This patient's Chinese in my practice and they had most at-risk group and so you're looking at normal numbers. You know like a little over 25 millimeters or so in axial length and we didn't always do axial length right. We just do that more reasonably.
Speaker 3:So we had to. You know we had to do other things to try to figure out what was going on. And I look at the patient and I say we've won, we've done this. Do you realize that You've got normalized eyes? You're not in a higher risk group. You were in a group that was at risk. Now you're not. And I look at the parents and I said you did amazing things for him or her. You came to me without any, you know. You put the faith in me to do this and we did this Okay. And I tell the faith in me to do this and we did this okay. And I tell the patients in the chair you need to say thank you to your parent because they did the hard work, they did the heavy lifting by coming in here in the first place it's a great point, it is tears in the eyes of some of these parents because they've lived that journey with you right, and they've lost sleep at night
Speaker 2:wondering before they started the process. What on earth am I going to do on this situation?
Speaker 3:oh my god. So it's like is this the greatest thing, or what?
Speaker 1:I've always explained that in. In practice it's like uh, because I, I have a fee for like when you get new retainers, you know, like this piece of plastic cost a few hundred bucks, but the amount you're paying me is for what I am doing to treat your child. That's what you're paying and I, I I'm a little bit opposite than you, karen, you you know I always learn from you, but I I'd like to congratulate the kid, I like to give him the, the high five and say thank you, you've been doing great. I can't believe how well you're doing. And then, on the side, like to the parents you know this is you. You know it was your initiative that you took this. You took the initiative to be proactive, to make sure that this child, your child, doesn't get worse, and not a lot of parents do that, and you decided to do that and they're the real heroes look what happened and look.
Speaker 3:And it's that we do that all the time too with our patients. It's just. I don't get a chance with the parents as much as I'd like to anymore, but yeah, we tell them all the time. We're repeating the mantra like look, what we did.
Speaker 3:How great is this? And you know, you think they're going to do this with a my sight lens. I mean, they've worn the lens for 20 plus years. They're still getting new lenses. They just love it. Sometimes the parents would come and say you know what? Um, you know, I, I don't think, I don't. I don't know if johnny should wear his lenses and to college, you know, because he's gonna be away from home, the most uncertainties. And I said to him okay, well, ask johnny what he, what he wants. He says they look, he look. Johnny looks at them and says I ain't wearing lenses during the day, I ain't wearing glasses during the day. Are you ain't wearing glasses during the day? Are you serious? I love this stuff.
Speaker 2:They do, Absolutely they do.
Speaker 1:I have eight-year-olds saying life-changing experience Eight-year-olds. I don't want to disparage the company, because my side does do well for my opiate control, for sure, but I get your point for sure, like when you compare the freedom of not having to wear any correction. There's nothing to that of not having to wear any correction.
Speaker 3:There's nothing to that. Well, it's just not even that. It's like, if I'm wearing and I agree I might say it's great I was there when they got approved. Actually, we had a conference in Europe and the guys were there. We congratulated everybody. It was high-fived because we finally got FDA approval myopic control. It's like our practice as well.
Speaker 1:It's amazing, it's great for when we use it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, is a patient going to do that for a couple decades?
Speaker 2:no, well, and the other thing is it goes back to that word. It's a great product and it does a great service and it doesn't quite have that magic that we were talking about earlier. Um, and that does reel people in given the given the choice. And I do give my patients the choice and I inform them and help them make an informed decision and by and large they say the ortho k or as we call it, our practice overnight site, that sounds fantastic.
Speaker 3:Let's do it ortho k is the sexy stuff, it's the same that's the perfect word for it.
Speaker 1:We all had it where I've had patients where, for what one reason or another, ortho k didn't work out for something, and and it was it was a blessing to have my site to make sure we're controlled in myopia, my site got us on the board with myopia control. I'll forever be grateful for that.
Speaker 3:I went to the original FDA meetings on this guys I was in Washington attending those meetings discussing what it's going to take to get myopia indication.
Speaker 3:You guys know the problem with ortho k right? You know why we we can't get it with ortho k is because we had to have the wash out the patient. If we washed out the patient you'd have it done in a new york minute. If you guys want to do a study and just to wash them out and show the prescription didn't change after two or three weeks, we did the smart study. I was part of that that.
Speaker 3:God bless, but that axial length measurement. The instrument was a Palm Pilot. It didn't work right. It blew up. We had 90 plus percent control over the single vision soft lens. As far as myopia, you know the axial length measurements. If we'd gotten that done with a proper instrument you'd have had it today. That would have been approved for myopia control.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad that we got it from my side study, so I'm really really thankful for that. And into that point, Dwight, I know you're chopping at the bit for this next one.
Speaker 2:It segues perfectly into the next topic. Honestly, because, we're talking about FDA approval and myopia control kind of moving forward. The big question that's always on my mind and I'd love to hear your perspective on it, kerry is what do you think is needed within our industry, within optometry, to really make myopia control truly be the standard of care amongst the doctors at large, not just the few that really do a lot of it and really make a worthwhile impact on the myopia epidemic?
Speaker 3:What's it going to take to get preventive care as a standard of care in medicine? When are we going to start to give up the allopathic model and start really practicing care for our patients? You know that's more. That'll answer your question more than anything, because you know you're dealing with something that the patient in his last year of life, I think, spends more in that year than they do and for an entire lifetime. Right, and that's that puts money in pockets of companies, pharmaceuticals, instruments, whatever it is and pays doctors. They get paid for the sick, they get paid for taking care of sick people. So let's, let's start paying people for taking care of healthy people and keeping people healthy.
Speaker 3:That swivel around will solve this whole thing for everyone, including diabetes, whatever you want to name it, high blood pressure. You can do this, but it's going to have to take. It's a grassroots thing. Medicine has become too expensive. I mean we can't afford it. It's bankrupting everybody. Myopia is bankrupting everybody. Look at the complications with high myopia. You know. You look at the ramifications of that down the road here. And so what is it going to take? It's going to take in the schools reverse, reversing engines and basically going back and looking at how to teach preventive care instead of teaching how to take care of sick people.
Speaker 1:Sure, so it sounds like it's a in your mind, also outside of what industry needs to do. But, more importantly, how we're taught as doctors coming up through the system of much more, because that's a lot of what we're taught is how do we take care of sick people, as you mentioned, and you gotta pay you too you got, you guys gotta get paid you can't have you can't have these plans out there that are paying you, you know, half a third of what you're worth.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know, and you can't expect the schools to be with these high tuitions, the students to pay those kind of tuitions and not get reimbursed for their skills. And you know this is a, this is a sickness that's been going on for the longest period of time. It's got to end because it's not healthy. It's not healthy for anybody, it's not going to. It's not going to. You know you. You know you can, you can drum into everybody that you know you want to have free healthcare, but somebody's, in the end, you're going to have to pay for that. So you know, let's, let's, let's finance that with keeping people out of the hospitals, saving the money on that end. Let's take the money we save and then put it into into preventive care.
Speaker 1:Making a preventative care prevent you from being sick and then saving those hospital bills, saving those things and let me, let me make sure you don't get into the stages where, right now, spending tens of thousands of dollars in your later stages. Let's prevent all that happening that's not just my control.
Speaker 3:That's for all medicine in general oh yeah, it's a complete switch route. It's going from the allopathic model into something completely different.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, all right, this is this is the question that I've been waiting to ask for you as the, as the, I guess, because I've seen how things have changed with OrthoK even when I started. But I want to hear your insight on this, because you were there from the beginning. The advancement in OrthoK design, what have you seen? What has been kind of just the first of interest the most. What have you been so excited about in changing ortho-K design, but also the technology that we now have for myopia control?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's incredible. I've had to re-educate my patients to think in microns and not diopters. Okay, because they can't think of diopters anymore. I'm thinking prevent, I'm doing preventive care, basically because I can, if I get a micron readout, I can, you know, act before there's even a core diopter change Right. So I'm trying to get them to think in that form, in the technologies. But the thing is you can almost design anything you can think about. The imagination is your limitation to what you can do, what you can do. I'm convinced that. I think if you can think about it, you can do it, and everything that has happened up at this point is confirmed that. I mean that viewpoint because it's just a matter of just being able to you know, how accurate can you design, how accurate can you measure, how well can you think about what you're trying to do? Because it's a conceptualization thing. I think it's one of the things I like so much about ortho kate's thinking in 3d or 4d even.
Speaker 3:You know another dimension entirely 40 yeah let's try 40 like, for you know chess multiple levels so I I think it's anything unless that you and dwight that you can imagine is doable, on a human eyeball with or with a, with a, with a contact lens, the design kind of whatever it is. I've seen it happen. I've hyperopia, progressive, you know designs, high myopia, high astigmatism. I mean it's all out there large diameter lenses now yeah right, scleros.
Speaker 3:I had the patent on this, the original scleral ortho k design. I did that thing when no one was finished, scleros, mind you I mean 2006.
Speaker 1:Think about it, I designed an ortho k today, actually to be, honest. Yeah, I saw that today I was labrogas. I was like 2006 my this is still on the fringe in 2003.
Speaker 3:Isn't that crazy times.
Speaker 1:I mean you know.
Speaker 3:So, really, if you want to do it, go after it. You can do it, because it's going to, and the cool thing about ortho-K is it's safe. You know.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And scleros as well for the most part you know, it's a lot safer than not doing it oh my god, yeah you know, there's no zero risk, there's, there's no, the very very small risk of, you know, cornel infection and that's going to exist with any contact lens honestly, without contact lenses, sure also versus, versus the risk, and that's one of the things I love about that.
Speaker 2:Uh, tideman, study with. You know the risk of vision loss at different axial lengths. That risk is so astronomically higher than you know. The risk of not doing anything is a much more risky scenario there.
Speaker 3:The problem for all of us was late. It's not really a problem, but the problem for all of us was late on the table here when they said, when they finally came around to the point, that it's not genetics, it's environmental too, and it's a big part of environmental. That took the doctor of the eighties, the reactionary doctor of the eighties, who was just doing things. I can't do anything about this, no matter if it gets worse, it's it's all given genetics right. It took that doctor and made him a dinosaur. The problem is you have doctors still doing dinosaur in in today 2023 reactionary medicine, reactionary optometry.
Speaker 3:So you can't do it anymore single vision glasses on young myopic.
Speaker 2:It's just, it's never needs to be done.
Speaker 1:Well, I have seen the change we're getting there. It's not where we need to be, but I think things like this, like this podcast and learning from you and AMC and vision by design I so many more doctors are learning and that's all we can ask for it's. It's empowering when I see like students come to my practice and they know about ortho K and my opiate control.
Speaker 2:And the excitement that you get from docs who are starting off when you go to a conference, like vision, but is on the excitement for people that it's starting to click. You know they fit a couple of patients and all of a sudden they're learning this and it starts to click and that fire that gets lit. And I've certainly experienced it there and, anith, you probably were the same way experiencing there at the meeting and it's from the groundwork that was laid by you and the others that started with you, cary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, the fire for me was when I could go into Vision by Design and I see somebody like Cary Herzberg and he's coming up and talking to me. Right, it's been 20 minutes with no nobody, like it was just getting started and spending that time and like educating me and learning and seeing all the history, that's what really, really impassioned me and that's happens every year, absolutely it's such an open sharing community and it's it's doing amazing things around the world.
Speaker 3:It's doing amazing things. I mean we've done it internationally too. We founded that group through our organization. It helped out in that thing in 2010, 2011 and now all over the world. So it's happening. It's amazing, I'm inspired by just listening to you guys.
Speaker 1:Gary, I want to thank you for an amazing podcast. White has got you teed up for a question that you've been really wanting to get at.
Speaker 2:There's a story that I have heard you tell before and I love this story and I'm sure there are people listening who haven't heard it and I thought this would be a nice point to end on because it is a great story. As we sit here, all three of us on this podcast, we're fellows of the Academy and if, as I am, of course, you are a founding member and, interestingly enough, and I know you've sat on a lot of panels you may not even remember you were on the panel when I did my fellowship exam, but you've sat on it for a lot of people. The story of the fellowship is an interesting story how that got started, from some very humble beginnings and and and in a very small setting there, if you don't mind sharing the story of how the fellowship got started and and there's the beginnings, where it came from it's cool.
Speaker 3:Well, it first off there was a fellow, the fios was from nerf, all right, and that was actually prior to us. But at the, at the meeting, at the GOS first meeting, we decided that there wouldn't be any prior fellows. They had to earn it from that point on. So the, you know, the problem with the fellowship was that and if we can go through a little bit of things, eddie Chow you know, everybody knows Eddie he actually failed the fellowship test and I actually looked into what happened to him at the fellowship test. I wasn't the fellowship chair at the time and you could see there was some. You know, I didn't agree with what they were doing and how they assessed it, so I took over. I just, you know we changed leadership on that. So I took over the fellowship at that point and the first thing we had to do was to figure out a way then to get a process in of how we would do fellowship. We all agreed that it would be a process that people would have in. They all flew in.
Speaker 3:It was amazing, these groups, you know, and we would take them into my I'm sitting right next to my theater room, next to me, and they'd sit down in the theater room and listen to the you know the lectures that we gave, and then they would sit over the weekend and my wife would make all these gourmet meals for them fine wine, everything else. It was great times. They would take the test during that weekend and listen to all the fellows. Then they would go down to my practice and look at my patients with the contact lens fits. They would assess that and we'd go through the practical parts, the three basic parts of that. That thing went on for three sessions, three of them we held here, and there were approximately 10 doctors or so that came through as the first fellows. You know that came through that process. The biggest break we got in Fellowship guys was in 2007 when Carolyn Kauke got drunk and decided to join the volunteered she did, she got drunk.
Speaker 1:She and Dennis Leong were both joined at that meeting and um she insists, by going by lion. Yes, I know she does, but she's still carolyn to me it always will be.
Speaker 3:So, yes, so I called, you know, after, shortly after, a couple weeks later, I wasn't one to rest on anything. I called her up and said how would you like you know I got a job for you how would you like to get involved really quickly? So I got her connected. You know she hesitated for a little bit but she decided to come on, thank god, and she, I got her into fellowship. But the whole idea was I'm going to get her up to par up the stuff of what we're doing here and then she's going to take over. And she did, and I mean that's probably been probably one of the biggest things I've ever done with this organization, because she's been amazing for all these years. Her contributions are you're talking about mine she's got just as many and the boot camp program right, yes, she's been a job, yeah yes, this amazing person and what they call.
Speaker 3:You know her gift to this organization. You know contributions after contribution. So she took that fellowship thing to a level that you know today what it's amazing know, and IACMM and everything else. So you know there isn't a I go and do these Johnson Johnson things where I go and call on the doctors, and I got a lot of our members Sometimes I call them I said you got to get your IACMM and then you got to go for your fellowship and sure enough, we're getting, you know, people to sign up, but it's like wow, you and sure enough, we're getting people to sign up, but it's like wow. So she's really done that and grown that whole program and made a huge part of the education program as well. I mean, she and I worked together.
Speaker 3:Myopia just didn't happen by accident. I actually thought about because you know, about preventive care, right, we're doing myopia. There were doctors around in our organization on the board that didn't want to involve myopia. It was just ortho-K. They wanted to be what they call purists. I said you can't just separate the two things. When you're doing ortho-K, it's myopia control, you know at this point. So we had that vision that we had to. You know, we had to be all inclusive for not just ortho-K no, I don't want to say just, but more the myopia part of it as well. So that was a vision that I had to do that whole thing. We finally got it incorporated in the name but but the education began before that. There was always a way in the system we were. This wasn't by accident. We introduced myopia programs. Nobody was doing it. In the 2000s in our, in our sessions, we were doing myopia education. You bring the best people on myopia, so yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for sharing that story, kerry. That's awesome. I've heard it a couple of times, but I love listening to it and I think it's something that everybody should hear in terms of you know some of that, the early origins of that important fellowship that we have. Anith, you got anything else for Kerry?
Speaker 1:I mean it's amazing to hear those origin stories and I hope you feel incredibly proud of how you've built this organization to where it is now. I mean we all owe you a gratitude, and when we were able to get you on the podcast I mean me and Dwight we were just ecstatic, we were blushed, I mean really in the presence of a legend, and it's always so humbling to to be around you, and I'm always excited when we get to cross paths and conferences. So I just want to thank you so much for what you've done for our profession, what you've done for all of our colleagues, what you've done for me I mean so much of what I do now and Dwight can attest to this too probably for himself as well. We owe so much to you and it's always great just to see you.
Speaker 2:I mean it's great to be seen. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for being generous with your time.
Speaker 1:You're on the Peloton, yeah.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I always love to see that, yeah.
Speaker 3:You got it. You got to work at it guys and I appreciate you guys are to go works both ways.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so seeing you guys doing what you're doing now, I mean it gets me even more active and what I'm doing keeps me active and seeing that keeps me inspired to go forward and you'll keep pushing this thing. So our lives, you know, do change all the time. We evolve and people come in and out of our lives, but but you know this is a one common theme, right With all of us. I mean I've, you know, I had doctors half my age burnout. You know, obviously you guys can tell I'm not burned out, I should. You know I could be retired, no problem. But I'm not. Because of this, you know, because I have this is a mission to do this thing, to get this done.
Speaker 1:And I can't think of a greater thing in life to do than to do this, this stuff, helping people. Both don't ever think about retiring.
Speaker 3:We want to see you at every single conference right.
Speaker 1:We always want to hang out with you. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this, thank you to everybody who's listening, and another fantastic episode of the corrected view dwight. Another one in the back. We really appreciate it. Pleasure, buddy. Always a pleasure to be with you and of course, carrie.
Speaker 2:She there in the the uh, the screen and the sound waves with you as well. Thanks so much for coming on all right thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Have a great night, everybody thanks.
