Non-profit fears for future of blindness research if Donald Trump's budget passes
LAKE COUNTY, Ill. (WGN) — Proposed federal funding cuts are hitting home in Lake County, especially when it comes to the blind.
The Foundation Fighting Blindness, a Maryland-based non-profit organization who organizes the Chicago Vision Walk, fears clinical trials and promising new treatments for blindness and retinal disease will be frozen or canceled if President Donald Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' passes into law.
'Six years old was when I got the diagnosis,' Rich Idstein said. 'It's tough.'
Idstein is a legally blind man who works at Ace Hardware in Libertyville. He suffers from Retinitis Pigmentosa, a blinding retinal disease with no cure. Idstein and his two brothers all suffer from the same disease, which gets progressively worse with age.
At the age of 52, Idstein figures he has five-to-ten years left before he's completely blind, but he's hoping clinical trials through the National Institutes of Health will lead to new treatments.
'We are driving research for therapies. They're called gene therapies that can replace or fix that code,' said Ben Shaberman, Vice President of Communications for the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB). 'So, the cells in the retina work correctly, and vision can be saved or restored.'
The problem is, under Trump's proposed budget, the NIH is facing a potential 40% funding cut to medical research, which would directly impact the dollars going toward the clinical trials that Idstein hopes can help cure the disease that's plagued he and his brothers.
The FFB has raised nearly $1 billion over the past five decades for eye and vision research, but its mission could be severely impacted if Congress doesn't act.
For more info on the FFB, visit their website: https://www.fightingblindness.org/
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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