LA BioMed

Please join us on Friday morning to welcome Dr. David Meyer, CEO of LA BioMed

Dr. David Meyer’s goals for LA BioMed reveal an ambitious imagination.

A new black bag

Instead of a single focus common to most medical research centers, such as the Cedar Sinai Heart Institute, and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, LA BioMed’s over 100 researchers study whatever diseases intrigued them during their rounds at the adjacent Harbor UCLA Hospital.

Meyer calls it “bedside to bench” research.

In 1969, when LA BioMed researcher John Michael Criley, MD, of Palos Verdes, saw heart attack victims dying enroute to the hospital, he taught Los Angeles firefighters how to restart their hearts. “Emergency,” a 1970s television show based on the firefighters, called them paramedics, a take-off on paralegals. The show popularized paramedic training throughout the world.

Also in 1969, LA BioMed researchers obtained a federal grant to train the first nurse practitioners. Nurse practitioners now bring medical care to underserved areas throughout the world.

In 1990, LA BioMed researcher Sherwin Isenberg discovered that the costly silver nitrate eye drops doctors were required by law to administer to newborns did not, as intended, prevent venereal disease infections. But Povidone Iodine drops did. And the costs for five doses was one cent. Isenberg’s eye drops have saved an estimated 500,000 children worldwide from blindness.

“Physicians don’t carry black bags now. But if they did, those bags would be filled with LA Biomed discoveries,” Meyer said.