Acclaimed MDs to be Featured Speakers at Opening of 2006 Las Vegas Event

SAN FRANCISCO – Two acclaimed physicians will be the featured speakers at the Opening Session of the 2006 Joint Meeting Sunday, Nov. 12, from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m.

“Helping the World to See” will be the featured symposium during the opening session. Lawrence (Larry) Brilliant, MD, will present “Blindness Prevention: Challenges to Meet” and Alfred (Al) Sommer, MD, dean emeritus of the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, will present “Reaching our Patients: Those We Know and Those We Don't.”

Both doctors are, in short, brilliant. Dr. Brilliant is credited with ending smallpox in India and co-founded The Well with renowned futurist Stewart Brand. He is the founder of the international health nonprofit, the Seva Foundation, which has helped restore sight to nearly two million people worldwide.

In February, Google appointed Dr. Brilliant to be the executive director of its philanthropic arm, and he has been called a technology visionary by magazines such as Time and Wired.

He is currently working on developing a system for early detection of disease outbreaks, which The Economist recently said could save the world from the ravages of a pandemic disease.

No less brilliant, Dr. Sommer and his list of accomplishments are just as impressive.

Formerly the director of the Dana Center for International Ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins, he is a recipient of the 1997 Lasker Award, the second highest biologic honor after the Nobel Prize. He won the award for his work on vitamin A deficiency and blindness in poor children around the world.

Dr. Sommer is currently coordinating an international effort to eliminate blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency, as well as reducing maternal mortality by more than 45 percent.

For more information, please visit www.aao.org.

About the American Academy of Ophthalmology
AAO is the world's largest association of eye physicians and surgeons—Eye M.D.s—with more than 27,000 members worldwide.  Eye health care is provided by the three “O’s” – opticians, optometrists and ophthalmologists. It is the ophthalmologist, or Eye M.D., who can treat it all: eye diseases and injuries, and perform eye surgery. To find an Eye M.D. in your area, visit the Academy's Web site at www.aao.org.