Health

David Paton, Creator of Flying Eye Hospital, Dies at 94

Published

11 months ago

April 26, 2025

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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Health

Wegovy Pill Side Effects To Watch for and How It Compares to Injections

Published

10 hours ago

March 24, 2026

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Wegovy Pill Side Effects To Watch for and How It Compares to Injections

Wegovy Pill Side Effects To Watch for and How To Minimize Them

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Health

Parkinson’s risk increases with exposure to common chemical, study suggests

Published

11 hours ago

March 24, 2026

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Parkinson’s risk increases with exposure to common chemical, study suggests

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A pesticide commonly used in America’s food supply has been linked to Parkinson’s disease, new research suggests.

A UCLA study published in the journal Springer Nature Link suggests that exposure to chlorpyrifos could increase the risk of the neurological disease.

The chemical is often used on agricultural products like soybeans, fruit and nut trees, broccoli, cauliflower and other row crops, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

EARLY PARKINSON’S COULD BE DETECTED DECADES BEFORE SYMPTOMS WITH SIMPLE BLOOD TEST

The study compared 829 people with Parkinson’s to 824 people without the disease over a 45-year period, focusing on their proximity to chlorpyrifos.

The researchers also conducted mouse experiments, where mice inhaled the pesticide as humans would for 11 weeks. Experiments were also carried out on zebrafish to study cell-level brain damage.

Chlorpyrifos is often used on agricultural products like soybeans, fruit and nut trees, broccoli, cauliflower and other row crops, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (iStock)

In humans, the study revealed that long-term exposure to chlorpyrifos led to more than a 2.5 times higher risk of Parkinson’s.

In mice, exposure to the pesticide caused movement problems similar to Parkinson’s symptoms, loss of dopamine-producing neurons, increased brain inflammation and build-up of harmful proteins.

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Zebrafish suffered brain cell death and damage linked to failure in the cell’s “cleanup system,” according to the study press release.

Dr. Jeff Bronstein, director of the Movement Disorders Program at UCLA and professor of neurology and molecular toxicology, noted that previous human studies also suggested an association between chlorpyrifos exposure and Parkinson’s.

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“[We were] surprised that the mechanism of toxicity was apparent in both mice and zebrafish,” he said. “We rarely find such consistent results in different animal models.”

A researcher commented that the consistency in results between human and animal subjects is “rare.” (iStock)

The researcher emphasized that the association between pesticide exposure and Parkinson’s was “very strong,” and the longer someone was exposed, the higher the risk became.

“People should avoid exposure to CPF and similar pesticides (organophosphates) by not using them in their home, eating organics, and washing fruits and vegetables before eating them,” Bronstein advised.

Study limitations

The study did have some limitations, the researchers acknowledged, primarily that it was observational, meaning it shows an association but cannot prove causation.

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It also estimated exposure based on participants’ locations, and did not measure diet, indoor exposure or personal lifestyle behaviors. Additionally, the results of the animal models can’t be translated directly to humans.

There was also the possibility that chlorpyrifos was used along with other chemicals, which means it could be difficult to measure its specific impact, the study noted.

Chlorpyrifos is used to control different kinds of pests, like termites, mosquitoes and roundworms, among crops. (iStock)

Industry reaction

Chlorpyrifos is used to control different kinds of pests, like termites, mosquitoes and roundworms, among crops, according to the National Pesticide Information Center (NPIC) at Oregon State University.

People can be exposed to the pesticide by breathing it in or by consuming contaminated food or water.

In 2021, the EPA banned the use of chlorpyrifos on food crops, but a federal appeals court overturned that decision in 2023, allowing its use to resume on some crops while regulators revisit the rule.

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In January 2026, the EPA issued an update outlining plans to move forward with a rule that would ban most uses of chlorpyrifos.

“Chlorpyrifos is subject to registration review, a process required under FIFRA (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act) in which registered pesticides are comprehensively evaluated every 15 years against current safety standards and the latest scientific evidence,” the EPA said in a statement sent to Fox News Digital.

“EPA is currently developing a revised human health risk assessment for chlorpyrifos as part of that review, and will consider this study alongside any other relevant submissions,” the agency said in a statement sent to Fox News Digital. (Getty)

“EPA is currently developing a revised human health risk assessment for chlorpyrifos as part of that review, and will consider this study alongside any other relevant submissions. Where the science calls for stronger protections or tolerance revocations, EPA will act without hesitation and without delay.”

Fox News Digital reached out to several manufacturers of the chemical for comment.

“People should avoid exposure to CPF and similar pesticides.”

Corteva, an Indiana agrichemical company formed in 2019 through the merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont, announced in 2020 that it would end production of chlorpyrifos within the year, citing declining sales.

In April 2022, the German chemical company BASF requested the cancellation of its pesticide registrations for products containing chlorpyrifos.

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“BASF does not manufacture chlorpyrifos and does not have any pesticide registrations issued by the U.S. EPA for chlorpyrifos-containing products,” the company told Fox News Digital.

No products from Corteva or BASF were included in the study linking chlorpyrifos to Parkinson’s disease.

Angelica Stabile is a lifestyle reporter for Fox News Digital.

Health

‘Call a Boomer’ payphones help cure loneliness, spark friendships across generations

Published

23 hours ago

March 23, 2026

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‘Call a Boomer’ payphones help cure loneliness, spark friendships across generations

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Along a bustling sidewalk in Boston, a bright yellow payphone invites folks to “call a Boomer.”

Almost 3,000 miles away in Reno, Nevada, a nearly identical phone prompts residents of Sierra Manor – an apartment complex for seniors – to “Call a Zoomer.” The goal is simple: to get strangers to talk to each other.

The project, often referred to as simply “Call a Boomer,” is the latest initiative from Matter Neuroscience, a New York-based company dedicated to mapping the “biomarkers of happiness.”

NEARLY HALF OF SENIORS IMPROVE WITH AGE — AND RESEARCHERS THINK THEY KNOW WHY

By connecting “two of the loneliest demographics” (older adults and younger adults), the project aims to prove that on a molecular level, “humans need one another in order to be happy,” according to Calla Kessler, a social strategist at Matter Neuroscience.

Along a bustling sidewalk in Boston, a bright yellow payphone invites folks to “Call a Boomer.” (Matter Neuroscience)

“Younger adults and older adults tend to experience the highest levels of loneliness of any age group,” the company wrote on its website. “So the goal of this project is to inspire generational connection through meaningful conversations, despite differences in age, lifestyle or politics.”

GRANDPARENTS WHO BABYSIT THEIR GRANDCHILDREN STAY MENTALLY SHARPER, NEW STUDY REVEALS

The hope, according to Kessler, is that the calls will shift the brain’s focus from stress to bonding.

“Our neuroscience angle is cannabinoids over cortisol,” Kessler told Fox News Digital. “Cannabinoids are the feel-good neurotransmitter in our brain that creates that warm feeling with a friendship — and when you activate cannabinoids, you’re counteracting the negative effects of cortisol, which is our primary stress hormone.”

“Younger adults and older adults tend to experience the highest levels of loneliness of any age group,” the company noted. (Matter Neuroscience)

This isn’t Matter’s first round of payphones. Its initial experiment connected one of the most liberal cities in the U.S. (San Francisco) with one of the most conservative (Abilene, Texas).

“We basically just wanted people to find common ground and encourage people to think beyond labels,” Kessler said.

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She noted that the negative results were “almost negligible,” with most participants enjoying their time speaking to different people.

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Now, the focus has shifted from political labels to generational divides.

The negative results have beem “almost negligible,” with most participants enjoying their time speaking to different people. (Matter Neuroscience)

As the “Call a Boomer” experiment continues, the team is busy collecting audio files of these intergenerational chats to prove that simple connections with other humans can help improve mental health.

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“Our research is essentially trying to find a non-pharmaceutical cure to depression,” Kessler added.

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Looking ahead, she said, “we’ll definitely be doing fun things that we hope get people’s attention and inspire them to learn a little more about themselves.”

Khloe Quill is a lifestyle production assistant with Fox News Digital. She and the lifestyle team cover a range of story topics including food and drink, travel, and health.