Health
David Paton, Creator of Flying Eye Hospital, Dies at 94
David Paton, an idealistic and innovative ophthalmologist who started Project Orbis, converting a United Airlines jet into a flying hospital that took surgeons to developing countries to operate on patients and educate local doctors, died on April 3 at his home in Reno, Nev. He was 94.
His death was confirmed by his son, Townley.
The son of a prominent New York eye surgeon whose patients included the Shah of Iran and the financier J. Pierpont Morgan’s horse, Dr. Paton (pronounced PAY-ton) was teaching at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the early 1970s when he became discouraged by increasing cases of preventable blindness in far-flung places.
“More eye doctors were needed,” he wrote in his memoir, “Second Sight: Views from an Eye Doctor’s Odyssey” (2011), “but equally important was the need to beef up the existing doctors’ medical education.”
But how?
He considered shipping trunks of equipment — almost the way a circus would — but that presented logistical challenges. He pondered the possibility of using a medical ship like the one that Project Hope, a humanitarian group, sent around the world. That was too slow for him.
“Shortly after the first moon landing in 1969, thinking big was becoming a reality,” Dr. Paton wrote.
And then a moonshot idea struck him: “Could an aircraft be the answer? A large enough aircraft could be converted into an operating theater, a teaching classroom and all the necessary facilities.”
All he needed was a plane. He asked the military to donate one, but that was a nonstarter. He approached several universities for the money to buy one, but administrators turned him down, saying the idea wasn’t feasible.
“David was willing to take risks that others wouldn’t,” Bruce Spivey, the founding president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, said in an interview. “He was charming. He was inspiring. And he didn’t quit.”
Dr. Paton decided to raise funds on his own. In 1973, he founded Project Orbis with a group of wealthy, well-connected society figures like the Texas oilman Leonard F. McCollum and Betsy Trippe Wainwright, the daughter of the Pan American World Airways founder Juan Trippe.
In 1980, Mr. Trippe helped persuade the United Airlines chief executive Edward Carlson to donate a DC-8 jet. The United States Agency for International Development contributed $1.25 million to convert the plane into a hospital with an operating room, recovery area and a classroom equipped with televisions, so local medical workers could watch surgeries.
Surgeons and nurses volunteered their services, agreeing to spend two to four weeks abroad. The first flight, in 1982, was to Panama. The plane then went to Peru, Jordan, Nepal and beyond. Mother Teresa once visited. So did the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In 1999, The Sunday Times of London’s magazine sent a reporter to Cuba to write about the plane, now known as the Flying Eye Hospital. One of the patients who arrived was a 14-year-old girl named Julia.
“In developed nations, Julia’s condition would have been little more than an irritation,” The Sunday Times article said. “It is almost certain she had uveitis, an inflammation inside the eye, which can be cleared with drops. In Britain, even cats are easily treated.”
Her doctor was Edward Holland, a prominent eye surgeon.
“Holland uses tiny knives to make openings that allow him to get his instruments into the eye, and soon he is pulling at Julia’s scar tissue,” The Sunday Times article said. “As the tissue is pulled away, a dark and liquid pupil, unseen for a decade, is revealed. It is an intimate and moving moment; this is medicine’s chamber music. Next, he breaks up and removes the cataract, and implants a lens so that the eye will keep its shape.”
The Cuban ophthalmologists watching in the viewing room applauded.
But after the surgery, Julia still couldn’t see.
“And then a minor miracle begins,” the article said. “As the swelling begins to go down, she makes discoveries about the world around her. Minute by minute she can see something new.”
David Paton was born on Aug. 16, 1930, in Baltimore, and grew up in Manhattan. His father, Richard Townley Paton, specialized in corneal transplants and founded the Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration. His mother, Helen (Meserve) Paton, was an interior designer.
In his memoir, he described growing up “among the fine, intellectually sharp, widely traveled persons of the Establishment.” His father practiced on Park Avenue. His mother threw parties at their home on the Upper East Side.
David attended the Hill School, a boarding school in Pottstown, Pa. There, he met James A. Baker III, a Texan who later became secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush. They were roommates at Princeton University and lifelong best friends.
“David came from a very privileged background, but he was down to earth and just a very likable guy,” Mr. Baker said in an interview. “He had his objectives in life straight. He was a hell of a lot better student than I was.”
After graduating from Princeton in 1952, David earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. He worked in senior positions at the Wilmer Eye Institute and served as chairman of the ophthalmology department at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
In 1979, while still trying to procure a plane for Project Orbis, he became the medical director of the King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“Among my duties,” he wrote in his memoir, “was providing eye care for many of the princes and princesses of the kingdom — about 5,000 of each, I was told — and it seemed that all of them insisted on being treated exclusively by the doctor in charge, no matter how minor their complaint.”
Dr. Paton’s marriages to Jane Sterling Treman and Jane Franke ended in divorce. He married Diane Johnston in 1985. She died in 2022.
In addition to his son, he is survived by two granddaughters.
Dr. Paton left his role as medical director of Project Orbis in 1987, after a dispute with the board of directors. That year, President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal.
Although his official connection with the organization had ended, he occasionally served as an informal adviser.
Now called Orbis International, the organization is on its third plane, an MD-10 donated by Federal Express.
From 2014 to 2023, Orbis performed more than 621,000 surgeries and procedures, according to its most recent annual report, and offered more than 424,000 training sessions to doctors, nurses and other providers.
“The plane is just such a unique venue,” Dr. Hunter Cherwek, the organization’s vice president of clinical services and technologies, said in an interview. “It was just an incredibly bold and visionary idea.”
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An experimental medication was shown to help boost weight loss by up to 20%, a study found.
Eloralintide, a once-weekly injectable manufactured by Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, led to “meaningful, dose-dependent weight loss” in adults who were overweight or obese but did not have diabetes, according to a press release.
The drug was generally well-tolerated by the study participants.
An experimental medication was shown to help boost weight loss by up to 20%, a study found. (iStock)
The Phase 2 trial, which was funded by Eli Lilly, included 263 adults. After 48 weeks, they had lost between 9.5% and 20.1% of their body weight, compared to 0.4% for those taking the placebo.
Treatment with eloralintide was also linked to improvements in waist circumference, blood pressure, lipid profiles, glycemic control and markers of inflammation, all of which can increase cardiometabolic risk, according to the researchers.
WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS COULD ADD YEARS TO AMERICANS’ LIVES, RESEARCHERS PROJECT
“The weight loss we saw in the study is clinically impactful,” lead study author Liana K. Billings, M.D., director of clinical and genetics research in diabetes and cardiometabolic disease at Endeavor Health in Skokie, Illinois, said in the press release.
“With this degree of weight loss in only 48 weeks, we see people having improvement or resolution in other conditions like hypertension, hyperlipidemia, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and more weight-related conditions.”
Eloralintide, a once-weekly injectable manufactured by Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, led to “meaningful, dose-dependent weight loss” in adults who were overweight or obese but did not have diabetes. (Getty Images)
“Furthermore, in the study, we did not see a nadir or plateau of weight loss, so I would expect weight loss to continue if the study continued for a longer duration. Additionally, up to 90% of participants on eloralintide improved by at least one BMI category,” she added.
The results were published in The Lancet and presented at ObesityWeek 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this month.
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While popular GLP-1 drugs — including Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound — work by mimicking the gut hormone GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1), eloralintide is a selective amylin receptor agonist that works by mimicking a pancreas hormone called amylin.
Similar to GLP-1s, it helps to slow digestion, reduce appetite and control blood sugar after meals. It has not yet been FDA-approved for clinical use.
While GLP-1 drugs work by mimicking the gut hormone GLP-1, eloralintide is a selective amylin receptor agonist that works by mimicking a pancreas hormone called amylin. (iStock)
The biggest side effects noted for eloralintide were mild to moderate gastrointestinal symptoms and fatigue, the researchers noted. These effects were greater at higher doses.
“Obesity is a complex condition, and no single treatment works for everyone,” said Billings.
“To truly address each patient’s needs, we need therapies with different mechanisms of action so that each person can receive the treatment that offers the best balance of effectiveness and tolerability for them.”
COULD GLP-1 WEIGHT-LOSS MEDICATIONS LIKE OZEMPIC BECOME THE ‘EVERYTHING DRUG’?
Based on the trial results, the reseachers plan to launch Phase 3 clinical studies for obesity treatment by the end of this year, the president of Lilly Cardiometabolic Health confirmed to Fox News Digital. The drug is also being evaluated for use in combination with GLP-1 medications.
Dr. Brett Osborn, a Florida neurosurgeon and longevity expert, shared some concerns about the new anti-obesity agents being developed.
“Bottom line: If an individual has an experienced and competent physician supervising their care — and driving the formation of healthy habits in addition to simply using the medication — they will lose weight,” a doctor said. (iStock)
“Between all the agents out there, there is no way any person cannot lose weight when coupled with progressive resistance training and attention to their daily macronutrient intake, even if only a little,” the doctor, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital.
“Yet big pharma will continue to search for novel targets to introduce a new drug that will likely prove similarly, yet not more, efficacious than the current agents. There are enough agents out there to drive weight loss to a malnutrition status.”
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Osborn also noted that the lower cardiovascular risk associated with the drug was likely due to the participants losing body fat, which reduces the risk for all age-related diseases.
“Some side effects are rare or take time to show up, so it is important to monitor new drugs like eloralintide for safety over the long term.”
“Bottom line: If an individual has an experienced and competent physician supervising their care — and driving the formation of healthy habits in addition to simply using the medication — they will lose weight,” he said.
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Sue Decotiis, M.D., a medical weight-loss doctor in New York City, also shared her thoughts on eloralintide’s potential as an alternative treatment.
“It seems that the more receptor systems that are influenced, the more weight a patient can lose,” she told Fox News Digital. “This is why tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound), which hits two receptors, induced more weight loss than Ozempic and Wegovy.”
“To truly address each patient’s needs, we need therapies with different mechanisms of action so that each person can receive the treatment that offers the best balance of effectiveness and tolerability for them,” a researcher said. (iStock)
“In my practice, I witnessed significantly better results with tirzepatide when patients were switched from Ozempic.”
Hitting more receptors may be the answer for those patients who do not respond well or who “hit the wall” with simpler drugs, according to Decotiis, who also was not involved in the study.
“For long-term safety and results, peptide drugs show promise,” she said.
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Whitney Di Bona, in-house attorney and consumer safety advocate for Drugwatch, noted that while the Phase 2 results are “promising,” it is important to be cautious.
“These drugs have been used for years, but new safety concerns keep appearing,” the Florida-based expert told Fox News Digital. Some of those include a potentially serious eye condition, delayed stomach emptying, bowel obstruction and serious digestive problems, which have led to many lawsuits.
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“Some side effects are rare or take time to show up, so it is important to monitor new drugs like eloralintide for safety over the long term,” Di Bona advised. “Even with careful studies, some risks may only become clear after the drug is used by many people.”
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More adults are suddenly developing allergic reactions later in life — and experts aren’t sure why.
Nearly 50% of adults developed at least one food allergy in adulthood, according to a 2019 investigation published in JAMA.
Illana Golant, founder and CEO of the Food and Allergy Fund (FAF) in New York City, told Fox News Digital that she developed allergies in her 40s.
GUT IMBALANCE MAY BE DRIVING AMERICA’S FOOD ALLERGY EPIDEMIC, EXPERTS WARN
“That is not fully understood at all or recognized … we don’t know why they’re starting at certain points,” she said.
FAF hosted a forum last week in Washington, D.C., attended by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, FDA Chief Martin Makary and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya.
Nearly 50% of adults develop food allergies later in life, studies have shown. (iStock)
Health officials and researchers are investigating whether allergies may be caused by gut health microbes.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Makary shared how the function of microbiomes has evolved over time.
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The intestine hosts over a billion different types of bacteria, which normally live in balance, according to Makary.
“But when it’s altered by the modern-day diet and by antibiotics and other exposures … that disequilibrium can cause inflammation [and] health problems, and it may be implicated in food allergies,” he said.
Ilana Golant, FAF founder and CEO (left), chats with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Washington, D.C., at the Food Allergy Fund Forum. (Ashley J. DiMella/Fox News Digital)
Golant shared that there seems to be a “critical inflection point,” as some foods trigger adults more than children.
“Seafood shellfish [and] tree nuts seem to be proliferating among adults,” she noted.
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Shellfish was the top allergen in adults, according to a 2018 survey of over 40,000 people that was published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.
Golant said she luckily knew about allergies when she had her first anaphylactic reaction.
“If I didn’t know about food allergies, I would have thought I was having a heart attack,” said the founder of the Food and Allergy Fund. (iStock)
“If I didn’t know about food allergies, I would have thought I was having a heart attack,” she said. “Genetics can’t change so quickly. In a generation, food allergies have skyrocketed.”
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Approximately one in 10 adults are affected by food allergies, according to FAF.
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“It’s very much the perfect storm of a variety of environmental triggers,” Golant added. “We still don’t know which ones and … if there is one primary [trigger], but my guess is that more likely, it is a perfect storm.”
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