Are you a risk taker? Do you pride yourself on giving unique and intriguing gifts? Well if you haven’t yet heard of Two Blind Brothers, pay attention. Two Blind Brothers produces clothing to fund blindness research at Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB). As far as they are concerned, “the development of a cure simply requires time and funding.” That’s where the shopping public comes in.
This year (maybe every year? I just came across them recently), Two Blind Brothers is asking you to shop blind. You spend $43, $79 or $132 to purchase a gift, but the catch is that you don’t know what you’re buying. You must trust the company’s promise that you’ll receive something “awesome.” In return, they will give 100 per cent of the profits to funding research to help 11 million Americans with retinal eye diseases – and by extension people around the world with these conditions.
In the news this week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched the first U.S. clinical trial to test the safety of replacement tissues from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for geographic atrophy, which is the advanced dry form of age-related macular degeneration. The study of 12 patients is being conducted by researchers at the National Eye Institute. Read more here.
FFB and the Canadian group Fighting Blindness Canada are vision research funders. Fighting Blindness Canada funds research into all blinding eye diseases. Cell therapies, gene therapies and bioengineering solutions are offering the most promising research treatment options for people living with genetic blindness, wet age-related macular degeneration and other conditions.
FFB and Fighting Blindness Canada are getting support in their efforts to fund vision research from groups like the NIH and those that specifically fund stem cell and regenerative medicine research, such as the Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine (OIRM) and Canada’s Stem Cell Network (SCN), as examples. Like Fighting Blindness Canada, OIRM and SCN share information about research progress and recent funding committed to vision research (see Valerie Wallace at University Health Network and SCN funding for Gilbert Bernier, Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, and Joanna Matsubara, University of British Columbia, here).
If you would like your gift to support a different area of medical research, you can always make a cash donation to the health charity of your choice or to a hospital’s foundation. For example, the Canadian Cancer Society has a page devoted to gifts of research so you can choose which specific area of research you want to support. Or visit the SickKids Shop to purchase gifts that support families with children being treated at The Hospital for Sick Children, or buy a greeting card to make a donation directly to the Foundation.
For those of you trying to declutter and give consumable gifts or ones that don’t end up in a landfill, some of the gifts that follow check that minimalist/environmentally friendly box too. Good Housekeeping has two gift ideas in its list that support pediatric cancers (see numbers 14 and 25). Cookies for Kids’ Cancer also raises funds for pediatric cancers. Learn more about their efforts here.
If you need another reason to make your gift one that gives back, watch AsapSCIENCE’s “This Is Why The Holidays Can Suck,” beginning at 2:14. Happy shopping!
Stacey Johnson
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