The 40th Anniversary presentation of “The Vision Awardsâ„¢”, which will take place on Sept. 23, 2010, in Beverly Hills, will present its 2010 “Humanitarian of Vision†honor to internationally renowned doctor/medical researcher/philanthropist Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. The announcement was made today by Helen Harris, founder of Retinitis Pigmentosa International, the presenting organization behind those awards.
Mrs. Harris, herself blind, launched both RP International and The Vision Awards in 1970 as high profile vehicles by which to raise awareness of the millions of people who fight against the gradual loss of their vision from both RP and Macular Degeneration. The Vision Awards also raise funds for medical research. (Please see: www.rpinternational.org and www.visionawards.org
Previously announced 2010 “Vision Awards†will go this year to legendary TV news journalist Dan Rather, longtime entertainment industry figures Stanley Jaffe (producer, “Kramer Vs. Kramer†and “Fatal Attraction,†) and George Schlatter (creator, “Laugh-In†), world renowned inventor Ray Kurzweil, U.S. Gold Medal winning athlete Steve Holcomb, and Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler, the Beverly Hills-based doctor who restored Holcomb’s vision from near blindness.
Mrs. Harris said, “Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is truly a medical wonder. His invention of a new drug for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer is now being used to treat other forms of cancer as well. He is a co-inventor of over 50 issued U.S. patents, has published more than 100 scientific papers, and has been honored with major awards from around the world for his ‘Service to
Mankind.’ Patrick’s philanthropy to Southern California hospitals and other medical causes has been as impressive as his genius. The Vision Awards Advisory Committee could not have possibly chosen a more deserving individual for our annual ‘Humanitarian of Vision’ award than he.â€
Previous recipients of Vision Awards include Bob Hope, Aaron Spelling, Bill Cosby, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Joel Schumacher, Oliver Stone, Richard and Lauren Shuler-Donner, Lawrence Bender, William Friedkin, Tim Burton, John Frankenheimer, Roone Arledge, Sherry Lansing, Robert Towne, Tom Cruise, Bill Mechanic, Phil Collins, and Jon Landau, among many others.
ABOUT DR. PATRICK SOON-SHIONG:
Dr. Soon-Shiong is Chairman of the Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation, Executive Chairman of Abraxis Bioscience and founder of the National Coalition for Health Integration. He is the Executive Director of the UCLA Wireless Health Institute, and Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, Molecular Genetics and Bioengineering at UCLA. Dr. Soon-Shiong is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. In 1993, he performed the world’s first encapsulated human islet transplant and the first pig to man islet cell transplant in diabetic patients. He invented the nation’s first FDA approved protein nanoparticle delivery technology for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, now approved in over 38 countries, and currently in trials for lung, melanoma, gastric and pancreatic cancer. He is a co-inventor of over 50 issued U.S. patents, has published more than 100 scientific papers, and has founded two multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies, American Pharma Partners (APP) and Abraxis Bioscience (ABII). APP was responsible for the only safe supply of Heparin in the United States in 2008, and ABII achieved the nation’s first FDA approved blood-derived nanoparticle for breast cancer, doubling the response rate in patients with metastatic disease.
Dr. Soon-Shiong currently serves on the Board of Directors for the National Institute of Transplantation, the Technology Council for the Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Northwestern University , which is part of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) five-year initiative for nanotechnology in cancer research. He serves on the RAND Health Board of Advisors and the President’s Council at RAND, the Board of Trustees for the Saint John’s Health Center in Los Angeles, the Advisory Board of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, the Advisory Board for the Institute for Technology Advancement (ITA) at UCLA School of Engineering, and the Board of Councillors of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He is a founding board member of the Dossia Foundation, a non-profit consortium of large employers (Wal-Mart, AT&T, BP America, Intel, Pitney
Bowes, Cardinal Health, Sanofi-Aventis, Applied Materials, and Vanguard) that seek to enhance consumer engagement in their own healthcare through use of personal health records. In 2009, he was appointed by Attorney General Cuomo to the board of FAIR Health, a new not-for-profit entity to facilitate nationwide reform of consumer reimbursement for out of network healthcare charges.
Dr. Soon-Shiong’s research has been recognized by national and international awards such as the Association for Academic Surgery Award for Research, the American College of Surgeons Schering Scholar, the Royal College Physicians and Surgeons Research Award, the Peter Kiewit Distinguished Membership in Medicine Award, and the International J.W. Hyatt Award for Service to Mankind. Dr. Soon-Shiong received the 2006 Gilda Club Award for the advancement of cancer medicine and is a recipient of a 2007 Ellis Island Medal of Honor as well as the St. Mary Medical Center Life Achievement Award in 2007 and the St. John’s Health Center Caritas Award in 2007. In 2008, he received the Medical Visionary Award from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network for his work in pancreatic cancer & the Los Angeles County Economic Development Council (LAEDC) Eddy Award in October 2009. The Los Angeles Business Journal recognized him as their 2010 Business Person of the Year, and the National Library of Medicine awarded Dr. Soon-Shiong the Distinguished Medical Science Award.
Since 2006, Dr. Soon-Shiong has turned his attention to transforming healthcare by establishing an integrated health information platform and founded the National Coalition for Health Integration (NCHI) to create a national health network for the secure, national sharing of biomedical information with the goal of improving health for individuals. In partnership with the Arizona State University and the University of Arizona he has also founded a Health Transformation Institute, which he dubs a “do tank†whose mission is to promote a paradigm shift in health care in the United States by better integrating the three now separate domains of medical science, health delivery, and healthcare finance.
ABOUT HELEN HARRIS:
Helen Harris has been a tireless advocate on behalf of people with visual impairments for the past 40 years. Herself a victim of Retinitis Pigmentosa, and legally blind for more than three decades (when she was a young mother, two of her three sons, ages 2 and 5, were also afflicted by the disease), Mrs. Harris personally knows all too well the helpless and hopeless feeling of having a disease that is little known. She is the founder of Retinitis Pigmentosa International and The Vision Awards, which she has dedicated to the “preservation and restoration of sight.â€
Mrs. Harris is also an author of the book, “How to Survive Losing Vision,†as well as a poet, a painter, and a member of the Producers Guild of America. She has testified before Congress about major issues facing the blind, and has also enlisted the aid of hundreds of major Hollywood directors, producers, and stars — as well as that of former President George H. W. Bush — in the creation of “TheatreVision™†presentations, in which blind audiences can experience a major motion picture in a theatre that offers them a special audio soundtrack.
ABOUT RPI:
From modest beginnings, RPI has grown into a global organization, committed to focusing world attention on eye problems, and to promote research, public awareness, education, and human services for victims of degenerative eye diseases. With the support of dedicated volunteers, including many entertainment, political, and sports figures, RPI has raised over $ 5-million to
date for eye research and education during the past 40 years of telethons and
special events, including its annual “Vision Awards†fundraiser. In addition, RPI has also enlisted other donors into contributing more than $ 300-million directly to medical research for eye health.
Said Mrs. Harris, “RPI has made a real difference. Within just the past several years alone, great strides have been made in retinal transplantation. What was impossible to even imagine five years ago will almost certainly become a reality within the next decade. New technologies and medical techniques have brought us to the threshold of hope, to the day when Retinitis Pigmentosa or Macular Degeneration will no longer carry with it a lifetime of darkness.â€
For more information, please visit: www.rpinternational.org and
www.visionawards.org
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Media Contact for The Vision Awards & RP International:
Dan Harary
Digney & Company PR
323/993-3000 x 211
dan@digneypr.com
