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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A decades-long effort to develop a vaccine against one of the world’s leading causes of severe digestive illness has reached a milestone, according to new research.
Scientists recently developed a technology targeting enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC), a bacterium responsible for millions of diarrheal illnesses each year.
The technology has now been licensed to French vaccine manufacturer Valneva for further development.
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The findings come after decades of research led by scientists at the University of Bergen and the Norwegian Research Center (NORCE).
One of the most common bacterial causes of severe diarrhea worldwide, ETEC is known to disproportionately affect children in low- and middle-income countries. Despite years of research, there is currently no broadly effective vaccine to prevent the infection, according to the study.
Researchers have made a major breakthrough in the decades-long effort to develop a vaccine against ETEC, a leading cause of diarrheal disease worldwide. (iStock)
The researchers focused on a toxin produced by ETEC that has long been considered one of the biggest obstacles to vaccine development.
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James Fleckenstein, MD, a professor of medicine and molecular microbiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the findings represent a promising step.
“We still have a lot of work to do to translate these findings to an actual vaccine,” Fleckenstein, who was not involved in the research, told Fox News Digital. “But the approach does look promising in the sense that the proteins elicit strong antibody responses that appear to offer protection against diarrheal illness after the first infection in children in developing countries.”
ETEC is a leading bacterial cause of severe diarrhea worldwide, especially among children in low- and middle-income countries. (iStock)
If the vaccine eventually reaches patients, researchers hope it could help protect children against some of the most severe forms of diarrheal disease caused by ETEC.
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In the meantime, Fleckenstein said travelers can take steps to reduce their risk of diarrheal illnesses. He recommends avoiding high-risk foods — including meals from street vendors in areas where sanitation may be poor — drinking bottled water in higher-risk regions, and practicing good hand hygiene.
While a vaccine is still years away, experts recommend avoiding high-risk foods, drinking bottled water and washing your hands to reduce the risk of ETEC. (iStock)
Fleckenstein also noted that vaccines are available to protect against typhoid fever, and said travelers should consult their physician before traveling internationally.
The research did have some limitations, the researchers noted.
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The technology is still in development and has not yet been tested as an approved vaccine among the public.
While the licensing agreement allows Valneva to continue advancing the research, additional laboratory studies, clinical trials and regulatory review will be required before the vaccine becomes available.
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Bryan Johnson, a biohacker and longevity guru who has claimed “we may be the first generation who won’t die,” revealed he has an autoimmune condition causing his stomach to “eat itself.”
The Los Angeles-based tech entrepreneur, 48, has previously shared publicly that he is hoping to live until the year 2140, when he would in theory be 160 years old.
Now, Johnson says he has been diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis (AIG), a chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the stomach’s acid-producing parietal cells, reducing stomach acid and impairing vitamin B12 absorption, according to Nature Reviews Disease Primers.
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“My stomach is eating itself,” he wrote in an Instagram post. Johnson also shared that anywhere from 2% to 5% of people likely have this disease.
“I’m going to try to solve it,” Johnson went on. “Will share all.”
Bryan Johnson, a biohacker and longevity guru who has claimed “we may be the first generation who won’t die,” revealed he has an autoimmune condition causing his stomach to “eat itself.” (Getty Images)
The biohacker shared that as a child, he ate sugary cereal, drank sugary soda and “gobbled down fast food.”
“I became a young father of three and began building a business,” Johnson went on. “Juggling that stress and grind, I let my health slip and gained 40 lbs. Within a few years I’d fallen into a deep, chronic depression.”
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“Somewhere in that timeline, my body began developing an autoimmune process affecting my thyroid and then my stomach lining,” he added.
Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson for comment.
AIG can remain hidden and can be challenging to diagnose, Johnson noted, often surfacing years after damage has already occurred to the stomach. It can cause iron deficiency, B12 deficiency and anemia, and can also increase the risk of stomach cancer, the expert warned.
“Low iron stores get normalized and rarely investigated at all when anemia hasn’t shown up yet,” Johnson wrote. “That blind spot is what hid mine for a decade.”
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He also shared that for 11 years, he has had low levels of ferritin, a protein that stores iron inside the body’s cells. Ferritin releases iron when the body needs it, supports muscle function and carries out other essential processes.
“We continually tried to raise my iron levels with food and supplementation, but nothing would work,” he said.
The Los Angeles-based tech entrepreneur, 48, has previously shared publicly that he is hoping to live until the year 2140. (Getty Images)
Johnson acknowledged that some common biohacking techniques — including hard training, sauna and hyperbaric oxygen — all raise the body’s demand for iron.
“But none of them explained the core failure: Despite me taking iron orally, trailing every formulation and using every timing trick, none of the iron would stick.”
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Johnson underwent a colonoscopy and upper endoscopy, which examined his entire intestinal tract. Five biopsies were also taken from his stomach, which found “clear signs of early autoimmune gastritis: early atrophy confined to the acid-producing lining.”
In January 2026, the biohacker stated in a post on his website that “by 2039, my goal is immortality.”
“In the age of AI, multiomics, and custom-built DNA, proteins and cells, no condition should be presumed incurable simply because no one has yet tried to cure it with today’s stack,” Johnson said in his post. (Getty Images)
He detailed his strategy for defying aging, which includes embracing a strict regimen to slow or stop biological aging, using AI to accelerate longevity research, testing new treatments in lab-grown cells and organs, and reaching “longevity escape velocity” — in which medical advances would eventually extend lifespan faster than he ages.
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“I may fail at this task, but my team and I will try our best,” he wrote at the time.
There is currently no cure for AIG, which Johnson said he wants to change.
Johnson acknowledged that some common biohacking techniques — including hard training, sauna and hyperbaric oxygen — all raise the body’s demand for iron. (iStock)
“In the age of AI, multiomics, and custom-built DNA, proteins and cells, no condition should be presumed incurable simply because no one has yet tried to cure it with today’s stack.”
Johnson ended his post by urging others to prioritize their health.
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“Care for yourself, care for others, care for the planet and care for our animal friends. Care for life, as it’s the most precious gift there is.”
The longevity guru also shared an image showing the detailed findings of his five stomach biopsies.
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At 93, sprightly referee Frank Foster is still brandishing red and yellow cards and running the field three times a week for his local soccer association.
Having taken charge of around 5,500 matches over a 46-year officiating career, the great-grandfather credits his longevity and match-day stamina to a lifetime of healthy habits and a foundational diet, news agency SWNS reported.
Foster puts his remarkable fitness down to the strict wartime rations he was fed as a teenager, noting that it ensured he grew up eating “healthy food” rather than “sweets and cakes.”
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Decades later, his game-day preparation is still fueled by wholesome nutrition, always starting with a morning bowl of oatmeal, cereal or marmalade on toast to give him the energy to last the full 90 minutes.
The meal keeps him active enough to referee men’s, women’s and children’s games, a hobby he jokes he will never blow the final whistle on.
Frank Foster started refereeing in 1980. Today, he still officiates men’s, women’s and children’s games around three times a week. (SWNS)
His sharp mind and authoritative presence on the field are just as strong as his physical endurance.
A military veteran who aced his referee exam in 1980 with a 98% score, Foster relies on old-school discipline to keep matches under control, SWNS reported.
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He believes modern elite officials are too “soft” and allow player antics to ruin the sport. To maintain order and keep players from acting out, he lays down strict ground rules before kickoff. He has no patience for intimidation or theatrical diving. “Those who go down like they have been shot, well, I would just book them,” he said.
He is equally uncompromising when squads try to crowd him on the field.
Frank Foster is pictured before he became a referee. (Frank Foster/SWNS)
“I wouldn’t let them surround me at all,” Foster told SWNS.
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“I would say to the players, ‘Stay where you are,’ and ‘If you move one more inch, I will give you a yellow card.’ You need to stamp your authority and let them know who is in control.”
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He also avoids the modern stress of video-reviewing plays, which he believes creates unnecessary “aggression and disappointment” over microscopic offside calls, adding, “I think it spoils the game.”
Foster credits his longevity to wartime rations, adding that he avoided sweets. (SWNS)
“Sometimes it is only the player’s toe that is offside — it is ridiculous.”
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Foster says he “never thought” he’d still be doing this at age 93, but he makes the most of that gift.
He keeps his kit freshly washed, making sure it is “neat and tidy” for when he gets on that field.
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Foster, of South Yorkshire, England, also scrubs his black Adidas boots after every game, making sure they are “nice and clean” for his next match.
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