ALMOST TWO YEARS LATER, AND STILL NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE!!!

Rosmarinic Acid Restores Complete Transparency of Sonicated Human Cataract Ex Vivo and Delays Cataract Formation In Vivo Chemerovski-Glikman, M., Mimouni, M., Dagan, Y. et al.

This article appeared in the June, 2018 edition of the scientific journal, Nature.

Quote from this article:

Taken together, our results support the concept that aggregation inhibition may provide a pharmacological treatment strategy for cataract, and highlight rosmarinic acid as a promising potential for palliative treatment of cataract, the leading cause of blindness worldwide. Data obtained from carefully designed and conducted future clinical studies may provide a strong foundation for design of the proper treatment regimen, dosage and duration. We hope that in the near future this promising pharmacological treatment will provide a safe, inexpensive and easily-accessible therapy for cataract.

As my cataracts continue to worsen with no hope of treatment in sight, I called a professor in the university department where this work had been carried out. I asked him whether there had been any move towards an eyedrop based on this momentous discovery.

Q: What is the status of your application for an anticataract eyedrop based on rosmarinic acid?

A: Why don't you have surgery?

Q: Why do you ask me that question?

Silence of several seconds

A: You know, I'm not an eye doctor.

Q: Then why did you bother to do this research?

Silence of several seconds

A: I'm a scientist. It was for the sake of scientific knowledge. If you need treatment, ask your eye doctor.

Q: I told you, the eye profession won't help us.

A: You know, if people want to use our discovery, there's nothing to stop them.

Q: But cataract patients have no lab facilities to make sterile eye drops.  What do you expect us to do?

 A:  Silence. No answer.

This concluded our conversation, which ended up going nowhere. Of course, I had not really expected anything else. He more or less admitted that this discovery, like all the anticataract agents before it, would be consigned to the annals of scientific knowledge without ever being used to help the 20 million+ human beings who are blind from cataract, and have to spend all their days fumbling around in eternal darkness. As I said before, mint contains rosmarinic acid, and mint is already a component of Ayurvedic (Indian) eye drops such as Isotine, where it is included at a concentration of 0.015%. The problem is, those eye drops also contain metal salts which would make the cataracts even worse. We need an eye drop with the mint, but without the metals.