POMERANZ: Well, I just have a hypothesis. I don't have a sure answer. But I consider it has something to do with what the drug may cause in terms of circulatory alteration to the optic nerve.

BROWN: Did somebody go totally blind forever?

POMERANZ: Well, it depends what you imply by blind.

BROWN: Can not see.

POMERANZ: Yes.

BROWN: everlastingly.

POMERANZ: Yes. The patients in these studies that I describe all have enduring vision loss. This is not a momentary transient color change that patients obtain for a few minutes or an hour that goes away. This is everlasting damage that occurs to the eye.

BROWN: So you're talking about somebody who could see the recent past and can't see anything, really anything.

POMERANZ: Correct. It could be a defeat of eye chart vision, rather than being 20/20, they might be 20/50, 20/200. Or they may have nonessential visions. They might still have 20/20, however have lost half of all their minor vision.

BROWN: OK. I imagine when I say blind, I imply I'm not trying to be attractive here, I mean like Ray Charles, blind. You can't see everything.

POMERANZ: No, I don't imagine that applies to people here in the study. Maybe one of the patients from them latest study that came out had actually bad vision, meaning they could just about see radiance or maybe a hand moving in frontage of them. But that was maybe one patient out of the seven. The rest of them had vision that was much superior to that.

BROWN: One of the things that the piece that lead this discussion says, and that Pfizer says, is that the public that there's a certain tendency that they have hypertension, or they are smokers or they're obese. But what I take notice of you saying is that in fact it's not quite that simple. That you might be absolutely healthy in all respects, nonsmoking but you have this thing in your eye that makes it defenseless.

POMERANZ: Correct.