The sixth period of respiratory therapy: The RRP?

So if -- WHEN -- the respiratory therapy profession survives the fifth period of respiratory therapy, what will our profession be like.  Chances are we will not be the neb jockey's and ventilator button pushers that we are today.  Chances are we will have more responsibility, and therefore improved respect and probably better wages.

Am I dreaming here? Chances are that I'm not.  I think there is too much pressure on hospital administrators to find ways to cut costs, and surely there's no better way than to quit doing procedures that there's simply no need for.  This would include about 80 percent of breathing treatment orders, incentive spirometer orders, electrocardiogram orders, and a variety of other respiratory therapy related orders.

Surely we won't want to cut our way out of jobs, and surely those working for the AARC and NBRC don't want to lose their jobs either.  And surely hospital administrators, physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists alike know that respiratory therapists are an integral part of the patient care team. So efforts will be made to keep us.  The question that remains is: what will be the scope of practice for the respiratory therapist.

First of all, I think all attempts at deregulating respiratory therapy will fail. What will happen is there will be a gradual shift from the respiratory therapist to the respiratory therapy practitioner. The first step will be offering a bachelor's degree in respiratory therapy, and this process has already begun. At the present time therapists may continue their education on a voluntary basis.

However, as is the case for many hospitals, as more therapist obtain their bachelor's degrees, there will be a push to hire only therapists with bachelors.  Or, perhaps, the incentive to obtain a bachelor's degree will be that only those with bachelors will be able to decide who gets what and when.  RTs with bachelor's will be, in essence, the team leaders, while all other RTs will be the educated button pushers.  

Eventually all therapists will have bachelor's degrees, and more respect.  The gradual next step will be the gradual assimilation of Respiratory Therapy Practitioners (RTPs).  They will be on the same level of respect as nurse practitioners (NPs), physician's assistants (PAs), and the nurse anesthetist. Our profession will finally obtain full the respect it deserves.

The fifth period of respiratory therapy: will our profession survive?

The profession of respiratory therapy has traveled through four periods where there was a fear that our profession would disappear, and we survived them all.  We are at the current time amidst a fifth period where there is, once again, a raging fear that our profession will some day soon cease to exist. Will we survive this time around?

First of all, it must be noted here that respiratory therapists are an integral part of the patient care team.  Respiratory therapists exit college with a knowledge base unique to any other medical professional.  Even in the 4th edition of his book "Fundamentals of Respiratory Care, Dr. Donald F. Egan said:

"The techniques that have evolved for the treatment of (respiratory) patients required the supervision of highly educated and skilled professionals whose degree of specialization is beyond the scope of the average attending physician or nurse."

Based on my own experience I believe this to be true to this day.  Over the years I have read many peer reviewed articles, and have seen similar quotes by various well respected physicians, respiratory therapists and even nurses.  It didn't take long after the first orderlies started taking care of oxygen equipment and Iron Lungs during the 1940s for them to realize that they knew more about this equipment than the ordering physicians.  This is a truth that continues to this day, and it should not be -- although often is -- denied.

During the 1960s the first professional organizations were created in order to improve the relationship between physicians and the respiratory therapy profession.  While much progress has been made in this regard since then, there continues to be a disconnect between the two professions. Thus, while individual respiratory therapists may earn the respect of individual physicians,
the respiratory therapy "profession" continues to be seen as an ancillary service where doctors write the orders and we just do as we are told (of course we often know this results in respiratory therapy apathy syndrome).

Why would this be?  You'd think that they would be more than happy to delegate responsibility to trained respiratory therapists.  You'd think they'd be happy to allow trained therapists do what they were trained to do, as this would be to the benefit of the patient and the entire patient care team. And while some physicians do allow such, the majority continue to have a poor understanding of what we are capable of doing.  I honestly think it's not because they don't like us, I think it's because that's how they were trained.

Yet there remain those who say the reason is because we only have an associate's degree, while they have doctorates along with many years of training. So while our professional organizations have done wonders as far as preparing us for the world of respiratory therapy, they have failed to improve the image of our profession to the medical profession.  It is for this reason why much of what we do is a waste of time, such as giving breathing treatments to patients with pneumonia, or patients with heart failure, or just because they smoked in the past.  It's for this reason patients often stay on a ventilator three days, when they could have been extubated on the first day.

The reason could be that some physicians are too proud to bequeath some of their responsibility to people with associate's degrees, although, more than likely, it's that they are unaware of the qualifications and skill set that the average respiratory therapist has. This is in no way the fault of individual therapists, and, to be honest, no way the fault of individual physicians either.  The more likely cause is that we are still a relatively young profession in search of respect that has yet to be discovered on the grand scale.

Making light of the lack of respect for the profession (and not the individual therapist) are bills presently alive in the State of Michigan and in the State of Texas that would would deregulate the profession.  They will try to spin this off as an effort to improve healthcare, although we all know the effort is to cut healthcare costs.  As the government slowly takes over the healthcare industry, it will do whatever is in its power -- even at the expense of good patient care -- to cut costs.

Will the medical profession succeed in getting rid of the much needed respiratory therapy profession? Will we survive the fifth period of respiratory therapy?  Well, most people don't know this, but Congress once tried to end science and thankfully failed.  So, chances are, our profession will likely survive the fifth period of respiratory therapy too.

Medical wisdom continues to make life better

One of my favorite topics to write about is how much medical wisdom has improved just in my lifetime. Many of the ailments you and I suffer from today may not even be ailments in the future.

In fact, while I suffered from uncontrolled asthma as a child as well as did many other asthmatics, new wisdom has it so that it's very rare for anyone to have uncontrolled asthma in 2010. In fact, as I will write about in an upcoming article, asthma deaths and hospitalizations have significantly dropped since 1996 alone.

I recently dropped over at a fellow asthmatic's blog, Kerry, over at Hold Your Breath to Breathe, and she posted (see here) her medical records from when she was born a premature baby. I hope she doesn't swat me for linking to them here, yet I think having access to such records is a great reminder of how well we have it today, or at least how much better our children will have it than we do.

If nothing else, it's neat to look back and know why things are the way they are. I have the discharge papers from my stay in a hospital in 1981 for asthma (somewhere on this page), and the doctor wrote about how important it was for me to quit using my inhaled corticosteroid as soon as I was feeling better. Of course that was good wisdom back then. Today we know that you should never stop using your inhaled corticosteroid, especially when you are feeling well.

I see from Kerry's first ABG that her PO2 was 370, which by 1991 standards was acceptable. By 2010 standards, we know that's way to much oxygen, especially for a premature baby, and can lead to more harm than good -- such as ROP (I write about this here). In a class I attended just a few days ago, it is now common wisdom to allow a PO2 to remain as low as 40, which is the PO2 that a neonate's organs were developing inside the uterus before birth. That to shock those organs with a higher PO2 can lead to other problems right away and later in life, such as retinopathy of prematurity, which is a disease of the eyes.

Another neat thing to note is that new wisdom actually greatly diminished the risk for diseases such as hyline membrane disease and neonatal sepsis. So while in 1980 most sick premature babies died, by 1990 most survived. And, while many of those kids in 1990 may have been forced to live with certain illnesses such as ROP, new wisdom has greatly improved even those risks.

I imagine that 10 years down the road new wisdom will make things even better. As asthma experts have learned that prematurity can lead to asthma, perhaps there will be something that can be done to limit this risk. And, while experts have learned that lack of exposure to certain germs can lead to asthma in term kids with the asthma gene, perhaps there will be a germ vaccine some day to prevent asthma altogether.

Ironically, through the suffering of our fathers things are better for us today. Because kids suffered from asthma years ago, beta adrenergic medicine was invented, and ultimately lead to the rescue inhaler that I got to use as a kid. And while asthmatics like me had to use the rescue inhaler often as a kid, most kids today with asthma barely know they have the disease.

The same can be said of other diseases. Modern wisdom is making life better for us all. This is why we must never forget the past, for what we learn by the past will only make the future a better place.

A cure for aging on the horizon????

I walked into the ER to do an EKG on a patient who looked like he wasn't a day over 60. Then, as I was typing my information into my EKG machine, I had to do a double take when I typed in his age: 99.

I looked at the patient, at the age on the sheet, back at the patient. Wow!

Of course, we know by now that a patient who takes care of himself and does not smoke looks a heck of a lot younger than the patient who smokes and over eats -- which would include the majority of our patients.

Later in the night I had a patient who was 95, and full of secretions. She looked all of 90. She was way overweight, and her skin was paper thin. She was diagnosed with pneumonia and sepsis, and was admitted to the med/surg floor.

"And of course she was ordered on breathing treatments," I said to a co-worker, "That treatment sure is going to help that rhonchi."

My co-worker said, "I think when someone is over 95 we should just let them stay at home and let nature take its course. I don't want to sound inhumane or anything, but I certainly don't want to live that long."

That got me to thinking. The person I was talking to was 38, the same age as me. So, when she is 95, it will be the year 2065. By 2065, technology may have improved to the point where the average lifespan is 150. Thus, my co-worker might just have to eat her words.

So I said, "You better watch what you say."

That in mind, I reminded her of an article I read recently. That, by the year 2030, scientist will have a cure for aging. And, whatever age you are in 2030, you will be that age forever. If you are 30, you will be 30 forever. And if you are 60, of which I will be, you will be 60 forever -- barring a tragedy.

Of course if you are born after 2030, you will age until you are 20 or so, and then you will be 20 forever. How many women would love that. Guys might not, because they tend to appear wiser as they age. But who cares what guys want.

What the article mentioned is that every disease you will ever get in your lifetime is in your DNA the day you are born. And, during the course of your life, if those genes are triggered, you get the disease. If your genes are not triggered, you do not get the disease.

And, as we age, we increase the likelihood you will trigger these "disease" genes. So, if we can stop the aging process, we can prevent people from getting diseases, and they will live forever (barring a fluke, a new disease, or a trauma).

I'm talking about hereditary diseases here, not those acquired by other means, such as the flu, AIDS, colds, etc. But the idea here if we have genetic diseases, and aging, under control, so to would we have these diseases controlled as well.

Here's what I think about this. If I'm 60 when this is invented, I will be among the wisest looking people on the planet. In the year 3070 I will be able to tell my great,great, great, great grandchildren what life was like in the 1980s.

Not only will I look wiser, as I will actually be still only 60 while 90% of the rest of the people will look 20, I will be among the few alive with memories of the 1900s.

So, if this new gene is invented, would that mean that we asthmatics can smoke to our hearts content without worrying about developing COPD? Or cancer?

I suppose if this scenario did happen, I would have to find another career to work the rest of my millennium of a life, because there might not be a need for hospitals.

This might pose a dilemma for all the patients who are already chronically ill, extremely old, and near death. Or, will an equally brilliant discovery be able to reverse aging? Aha, wouldn't that be great. So there might be a chance for me looking 20 again after all, or all of us for that matter.

Of course there might be a need for RTs for a while, as doctors allow nature to take its course for these folks. Be a neat idea for a book anyway.

I suppose it might be sadder for some of us who already lost our parents to aging, so we'd be a rare breed to only have known our parents, or grand parents, a short time. If one of us loses a spouse before 2030, we would be a rare breed to have to go through forever alone.

And what about Heaven. Some of us might get tired of life at some point, say after 300 years, and want to go to Heaven.

So will there be a cap on life.

And what about world population? Right now there are so few people in the world that if you took every person, you could fit them all into the state of Texas. What would happen if nobody ever died? Of course politicians in Washington would be happy, because there'd be plenty of taxpayers.

On another note, it says right in the Bible that no person, after Noah and his family, will ever live past 120 years. So I suppose you'd have some philosophers debating the Bible.

If people lived forever, the Bible might actually be of more use, as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison once discussed, God is needed to maintain order in society. Or, to state it another way, fear of the Devil is needed to encourage kids to be good to one another.

Currently, we spend our entire lives acquiring knowledge and possessions, and by the time we are old enough to appreciate these things we start to age, and then nature takes its course.

After this discovery, all people will be able to keep their knowledge forever. Right now, we see a lot of times mistakes of the past are repeated, mainly because the people who experienced the mistakes of long ago are now deceased.

So, there is one thing I can say for sure: we'd be a wiser nation/world.

Since people no longer die, wisdom of our fathers will not be forgotten, because our fathers will still be alive to share that wisdom.

And that is the thought of the day.

An RT with a Segway would be COOL

It is said that an average RT walks 20 miles each 12 hour shift. There are some busy days that my feet are killing me by the time my shift is done. Sure, the excercise is good, but there comes a point when all that walking catches up with you.

I also think that I do not want to be doing this when I'm 60, as I see some of my elder co-workers are limping and ailing all the time. Is it because their bodies are superanuated? (That means: worn out from years of service.) Or just the normal aging process?

Still, when I first saw a Segway on TV a few years back, I thought: I definitely want one of those.

That would be so cool to drive a segway from room to room, floor to floor. Man, that would be awesome.

Now if I could just talk my RT Boss into buying me one.

New RT opportunities on the horizon?

I'm not sure what the future holds for me, nor my profession as a whole, but sometimes I think it would be nice if there were more opportunities for us RTs.

When I talk to people who are pondering whether they want to become an RT or an RN, I usually find myself encouraging them to become an RN, if they can financially afford to wait the three to five years to get into the RN program.

I mean no disrespect to my profession, but the way it stands right now there are far more opportunities as an RN, and better pay too. With the nursing shortage, as an RN you are almost guaranteed to find a good job with good pay.

Nurses can work at nursing homes, doctor's offices, home care, in the hospital or a variety of other places. For the most part, us RTs are stuck in one department of one hospital, unless you happen to live where there is more than one hospital, of which I do not.

Not only that, but as an RN you can work in one department until you get sick of it, or until you get tired of the politics in that area, or until you get tired of your boss, and then you can transfer to a different department even within the same hospital.

And, respectfully, this is why I hereby would like to learn more about a new bill I read about recently over at Snotjockeys. The law is HR 3968. This is legislature that would supposedly create more opportunities for RTs allowing "(Medicare) of the Social Security Act to cover the services of a qualified respiratory therapist performed under the general supervision of a physician."

What kind of jobs would this create? According to YourLungHealth.org, RTs would be able to provide "smoking cessation and asthma management, home care services and patient education, and other doctor's office and home services... without the physician having to be physically in the office...

"In addition, if medically appropriate, the respiratory therapist could provide a home visit (something they cannot now do under Medicare) as a substitute for a physician who might visit you at home. Respiratory therapists would still be under physician supervision, but if this becomes law, qualified respiratory therapists could provide services as a physician's extender, and not have to have the doctor always on site."

Occupational and Physical Therapists have had this opportunity for several years.

Right now we don't currently do asthma training or smoking cessation management outside the hospital setting because, I believe, medicare will not pay for it. If this law passes, then an RT from our department would be able to provide these much needed services to the community.

And if I got tired of my current job, I'd be able to work for a doctor's office. I'm sure the pay there wouldn't be as good, but at least it would be an opportunity.

Plus there would be the opportunity of working as a home care RT. There are many patient's who have difficulty getting out of their homes, and having an RT do a pulmonary assessment on behalf of the doctor would not only benefit the patient, but the doctor too.

Right now there are very few opportunities for RTs, and, quite frankly, according to President of the AARC Tony Rodriguez it's high time for "members of our profession to shake off the bonds of disouragement, apathy and resigned attitude and unite behind the legislative efforts to get H.R. 3968 passed into law."

Many RTs and RT organizations have gone on record in support of this bill, as one wrote, "passage of the bill would serve as confirmation of the integral role RTs now play in today's health care system and potentially create many new opportunities for therapists in the future.

However, we at the RT cave cannot say we support this bill yet, considering we know so little about it. But we will continue to look into it and report our findings.

You can follow the progress of the bill through this link.

To read the actual bill, click here.

Note: After studying this bill further, I see that one has to have a bachelor's degree. I wonder how many RTs have a bachelors degree. No one I know does. I don't even think RT schools in this area offer that option.

Fewer Vent paitents is ailing small town RT Caves

It used to be really busy here at Shoreline. In fact, even back two years ago I remember being so busy I didn't even have the time to read a chapter of whatever book I stuffed into my tote bag.

In the past year, however, I feel like I could literally sit here in the RT Cave and write an entire novel -- each night.

About a week ago we had a patient on the ventilator when I arrived. Don't laugh, but I had to actually search for the silence button. And then, that same night, I had to set up a vent. My brain was a little rusty, and I couldn't remember the formula for determining ideal body weight.

Other than that I was in RT Heaven that night; it felt great to be doing real RT work.

But that was one night. The next night we were back to our usual 10 patients, 9-10 of whom giving the treatment was equivalent to having them drink a glass of water for pneumonia.

I saw a recent trends report for Shoreline, and it went something like this: 99 vents set up in2000, 98 set up in 2001, 88 in 2002, 80 in 2003, 84 in 2004, 74 in 2005, 48 in 2006, 24 in 2007.

None the downward trend.

What's the reason for this? Total patient admissions have been consistent, so it's not because people are choosing a different hospital. BiPAP set-ups have been consistent, so it's not because the BiPAP is saving people from going on vents.

Another trend is length of stay on the ventilators, which has dramatically dropped from an average of 100 hours per patient all the way down to 21 hours per patient. This, I believe, can be attributed to a variety of factors, including quality staff, great doctors who are more receptive to protocols, and new microprosessor ventilators.

So, technology can be attributed to some of our decline, but what about the lack of ventilators overall trending down? I have theories here too.

Many of the most critical patients are being shipped to specialty hospitals, i.e. cardiac, neuro, trauma. While we used to take care of more cardiac patients, it doesn't make much sense to keep them here when they can be minutes away from a cardiac doctor.

Not that we still couldn't take care of these patients here. We could.

Likewise, more and more patients are prevented from moving to the critical care floor due to early intervention and treatment. This goes along with improved education, quality of care and increased vigilance regarding patient's showing early signs of problems and nipping them in the bud.

So, now I sit here with seven or eight expensive state of the art ventilators collecting dust in the back closet. I'm prepared to take on an epidemic, and yet here I sit while my skills atrophy.

I've written before on these pages how we have been trying to get protocols, and how the RT leaders are against them more so because they are afraid they will result in less work for us. Well, what better time than the present for them to make their case.

I know from reading other blogs, and talking with other therapists, that we are not alone in this.

This is part of a developing trend for small town hospitals. In fact, it might be the wave of the future. We might never get back to the level of having 100 vents in a year again, even though we are more than equipped to handle it.

The reason I saw these statistics is because the admins are concerned about recruiting RTs here in the future. Are we going to be able to recruit RTs to a hospital when they know they'd just sit around waiting for an emergency to happen, as my main character does in "The RT Cave in the Year 2020."

If you're a young RT fresh out of RT school who wants to keep his skills up, a small town RT cave may not be for you anymore. But trust me when I say that wasn't true two years ago, and it definitely wasn't true when I started here.

Rumor has it the admins are aware of how a high quality area is being underutilized, and are seeking to bring something in to generate some business for us. That in itself is a scary idea, especially if this downward trend is an aberration.

Negative pressure ventilation come full circle?

The respiratory therapy profession basically began with the iron lung, or negative pressure ventilator. Wouldn't it be ironic if this type of therapy made a comeback, and negative pressure ventilators were the wave of the RT future.

The latest negative pressure ventilator is called the Biphasic Cuirass Ventilation, and one such ventilator is the Medivent Hayek RTX Biphasic Cuirass Ventilator made by Medivent International, and involves a simple shell placed over the patient's chest, instead of over the entire body as was the case with the inconvenient iron lung of the 1950s.

I can certainly see some advantages of the cuirass ventilator. For one thing, you would avoid the barotrauma associated with positive pressure ventilators and the risk of pulmonary infection because you wouldn't have a tube in the patient's airway nor a tracheotomy.

According to this company, since negative pressure ventilation is "more normal," it would be more comfortable for the patient, and allow RTs greater control over tidal volume and respiratory rate, and, ultimately, make weaning easier.

Likewise, the company claims that the vent "helps to maintain and redevelop the respiratory muscles which often wither and waste with respiratory failure and mechanical ventilation (and also) improves cardiac output."

Here are some more uses, as listed on Medivent International's website:

• It can be used as an aid in weaning a patient from conventional positive pressure vents, particularly those difficult to wean patients.
• Assists patient with removal of secretions, and is used as a glorified chest physiotherapy machine. It has been used in this way for Cystic Fibrosis patients and COPD patients.
• Can be used similar to BiPAP to provide treatment for patients before their condition deteriorates, and thus requiring intubation.
• Can be used as an at home vent and in hospitals for neuromuscular diseases and head and spinal injuries.
• It has been used on post-operative patients
• Can be used on Asthma and COPD patients

This type of therapy would be better for the patient in that they wouldn't have to have a tube in their throat, which can be very uncomfortable and annoying, and requires, most of the time, that sedative be used to make the patient more comfortable, or to forget the event all together. Sometimes this can make weaning difficult.

However, despite these claims, I'm not convinced this machine would be anything more than a glorified and expensive BiPAP machine, of course without the annoying and often difficult to get used to nasal or face mask.

I can also think of some cases where this type of ventilator would not be beneficial, especially if you had excessive secretions or pulmonary edema. Of course, even in these cases, nasal tracheal suctioning would always be an option.

However, this type of breathing apparatus would not protect the patient's lungs from aspiration, may not allow for adequate removal of CO2, and may not be effective for obese patients. In these cases, RTs and doctors would have no choice but to opt for the more conventional positive pressure ventilator.

Wikepedia has a nice write up about the curiass ventilator, but it would appear someone from Medivent International transcribed the copy here from their own website, as it's basically the same information not even reworded.

Anyway, that's my review of this ventilator based on some quick research I did. I wonder if this has been used anywhere in the U.S. If so, I wonder what the general opinion of this innovative therapy is, as so far most of what I've learned regarding this vent has been from the company.

Scientists develop new cure for asthma, allergies

We are now in the year 2039 and you click on the compuTV to hear an aging Anderson Cooper reporting on a new medication approved by the FDA that is predicted to "end asthma and allergies as we now know it."

You learn that the new medication is called Allergycure, and it is a one time injection to neonates within the first week of life that works to mature the immune system in any child with the "faulty gene" that, if triggered, causes allergies, asthma and/or eczema.

The goal of this therapy is to prevent these diseases. Studies on mice and pigs showed that Allergycure had an efficacy rate of 90% over 10 years. However, whether or not the medication will prevent the "faulty gene" from being triggered later in life is yet unknown.

Despite the prospects of eliminating asthma, a controversy has evolved. While the medicine is predicted to prevent asthma, there is the risk that it might actually cause asthma in 6% of neonates who do not have the "faulty gene." So it is paramount that each new child is tested for the "faulty gene" prior to getting Allergycure.

Likewise, Allergycure has also caused flu like symptoms in 6% of the neonates who get it, and, in studies, 20% of those patients ended up on ventilators with severe pulmonary complications and 2% died. Overall, 98% of those tested with Allergycure never acquired asthma and never had any side effects.

After an intense debate in the Senate, a bill making it mandatory that all newborns with the "faulty gene" be given Allergycure passes by a vote of 85 to 15.

"Yes, there are some complications to Allergycure that must be worked out," said Senate Majority leader Alec Baldwin Jr. "But this bill will prevent millions from suffering from asthma, prevent the need for spending billions on asthma medications and hospital stays, and eliminate thousands of annual deaths from "faulty gene" related diseases."

In a ceremony on Christmas Eve, President Will Smith signed the bill saying, "This is a great day for pulmonary medicine in America, and perhaps the greatest Christmas gift to current asthma sufferers. What we have proven by me signing this legislature is that gene therapy may some day cure the most severe diseases that ail us, not just asthma"

Along with neonates, the bill allows for all current sufferers of allergies, eczema or asthma to voluntarily report to their doctor to receive the medication. However, there is no guarantee that the medicine will work for them.

Dr. Emery Yoe of National Jewish Medical and Research Center said, "Allergycure can be given to current asthma and eczema patients to prevent any further allergy complications? This might be great for patients with mild cases, but it will not cure asthma, especially if the patient has permanent lung damage from previous asthma attacks."

He said, for example, that if a person is exposed Rhino virus, he will still get a cold and his body will still attack the virus, and this may result in bronchospasm. The same will hold true if a person already diagnosed with asthma is exposed to bacteria; Allergycure will not prevent your body from fighting off the infection.

Some children, Yoe explained, will still develop asthma. "While science is advancing fast in this area, you will still have a few children born with immature lungs that lend them to being susceptible to developing asthma later in life, and you will still have some children exposed to certain bacteria or, for example, the Rhino Virus, where they will develop pulmonary complications and lend to the inevitability of asthma later on. And even though some will still develop asthma, they will not have allergies, which will bode well for them."

He said that research is still being conducted to "completely eliminate asthma, although it may take some years. Yet, still, Allergycure will mean great things to many."

On this great day, Will Smith proclaimed in his speech to the World, "Scientists predict that by the year 2049 there will be no children under the age of 10 with asthma, and all other asthmatics will have 2,600,000 fewer asthma attacks, saving the economy over $300 billion in medical costs. And, most important, preventing milions from suffering.

"And," he continued, "scientists predict that by the turn of the next century, asthma will be completely eliminated. This is something we can breathe easy about."