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Call to All Vision Investigators
Dear Vision Researcher:I am sending this to all the Canadian Vision Researchers whose email addresses are known to me with the hope of developing support for a Canadian Institute of Vision Health Research. You know about the Government's ecently-announced "Health Budget." That included funding for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR - its website is http://www.cihr.org/) which Dr. Henry Friesen, Director of the Medical Research Council, is trying to establish. With the injection of some half-billion dollars of new money into health research in Canada, this proposal will come to fruition. I, and many others involved in vision health research (see the Web page of the Vision Health Research Council , established by Dr. Jean Real Brunette, at: )
http://www.crc-cuse.usherb.ca/vision/research/website.htm
are worried that a CIHR that doesn't have a separate Institute for vision-related science will have our interests submerged if we are (very likely) embedded within a Neuroscience Institute.
Those who know the history of the U.S. National Eye Institute (NEI) of the National Institutes of Health will appreciate the struggle that took place in the mid-sixties to extricate vision resesarch from within a neuroscience umbrella organization. The success of the NEI, with protected funds for vision research, is apparent to all of us.
We must work to give vision research in Canada a similar free-standing status, worthy of the importance of our quest and our science, and this is going to require the efforts of many. Would you be willing to help in this effort? I'd appreciate hearing from you if you are, and if you have some ideas about the best ways of achieving a Canadian Institute of Vision Health Research within the CIHR.
Thanks.
Sincerely yours,Martin J. Steinbach, Ph. D.,
Professor of Ophthalmology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Director, Eye Research Institute of Canada,
Professor of Psychology & Biology, Centre for Vision Research, Atkinson College, York University
The Toronto Hospital
Western Division
399 Bathurst Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5T 2S8
