Category: Blogs

In the summer of 1990, my wife and I were invited to join a People to People Ambassador Tour to visit the Soviet Union. The USSR didn’t break up into its member states until the following year, late 1991. So, we got a look at what turned out to be a huge national facade – a strong military front and a “third world” infrastructure.

I was part of a medical group (medical laser specialists) that visited several hospitals and laser centers (?) within Moscow (Russia), Tbilisi (Soviet Georgia), Kharkov (Ukraine) and in St. Petersburg (again, in Russia). (Read more...)

In the summer of 1979, I had been hired to conduct a survey of all of the major contact lens companies operating around the world, for a US company interested in finding a partner for its contact lens company. I had completed my interviews of the companies in the US and Europe, and now had to interview the two companies producing lenses in Japan. Since this was my first trip to Japan, I decided to combine business with pleasure and took my wife along to spend a week on vacation, visiting Tokyo and Kyoto, before I was to (Read more...)

Recall that I had toured Europe in the fall of 1979, visiting the various contact lens companies that were based there, as well as interviewing notable doctors involved in their use, on an assignment to assess the contact lens companies in both the U.S. and Europe for a Japanese client interested in acquiring technology for starting a contact lens business in Japan.

This was my first trip to Europe and I kept a diary of my daily travels – the first and only time I have ever done so. It’s a good thing I did, because there were (Read more...)

The Bausch & Lomb Soflens, the original soft contact lens, was first approved for marketing in March 1972, My first contact lens assignment began in June of that year, an assessment of the “safety and efficacy” of the Soflens. Over the following fifteen years, I led over 150 assignments involving both soft and gas permeable contact lenses, becoming, in that period, the “guru” of the contact lens industry.

But one of the most interesting assignments, in the fall of 1979, involved my traveling all over the United States and Europe to investigate possible technical partners for a (Read more...)