Living the Dream with Donald Korb, OD

Click here to watch the video version of this podcast.

Optometrist Donald Korb’s myopia hasn’t affected his renowned ability to observe and to see what’s next.

The renowned researcher, inventor, and thought leader in both optometry and ophthalmology is known for discovering and naming meibomian gland dysfunction, now recognized worldwide as the primary cause of dry eye, and giant papillary conjunctivitis, a complication of contact lens wear.

Those discoveries – not to mention all the other ocular-related conditions he identified ¬– changed the face of ophthalmology and optometry. But the most personally satisfying accomplishment was his first breakthrough: Creating the first membrane hydrophilic contact lens.

From there, he tells host Paul Karpecki, OD, his life took off like the lead character in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Whatever he imagined came to reality.

Listen to this week’s podcast for Dr. Karpecki’s in-depth conversation with Dr. Korb. In it, they discuss:

• How a visit with Polaroid led him to ocular photography and contact lens development.
• The animal that inspired the first soft contact lens.
• What it takes (and what it doesn’t take) to be a great inventor.
• Why treatment by design is the way forward for eye care.

Click “play” to listen to the insightful conversation.

Transcript:

Paul Karpecki: Hello and welcome to the OIS podcast. I’m Paul Karpecki. I practice in Lexington, Kentucky and today I have a great pleasure to interview Dr. Donald Korb in optometric professions, truly, if not, in my opinion, the most innovative practitioner I’ve ever met, he’s always been decades ahead. He’s termed key things that we take for granted today like meibomian gland dysfunction, you know, mgd and it goes through so much in the world of contact lenses prior now lid seal today, all came from Donald Korb, Donald had this great ability to observe and apply it to research and make it practical and, and was willing to share things if it wasn’t for Donald, my dry eye clinic wouldn’t be where it’s at today, he was kind enough to open up his doors to me numerous times that I go in for refresher courses at his office, and I’d pick up new things, whether it was demodex 15, or 17 years ago, or whether it was mgd. You know, during that time of understanding it more as just coming out diagnostics. So I’m grateful to Donald for that. But I also think He’s the perfect person to interview from an innovative standpoint, because he’s a humble man. And so although we know him well in optometry, I think across the field, he’s well-known ophthalmology, we now have the chance to really get to know him. And to utilize his skill of seeing the future, he always seemed to anticipate where things are going, whether it was contact lenses, dry eye, Mgd, etc. So I’m honored to have you here, Donald, thank you for making the time to join the podcast.

Donald Korb: It’s my pleasure, Paul, thank you for inviting me and I look forward to talking to you and having some fun.

Paul Karpecki: Thank you, me too. How you end up in optometry?

Donald Korb: When I was in college, I realized that I really didn’t want to be a physician. And I didn’t like blood. I didn’t like a lot of the aspects of medicine at that time today. It wouldn’t bother me, but then it did. So I was with it was a crazy time. You know, it was between the wars, and it was just a very turbulent time in a different way than today. But turbulent, nevertheless. And my father practice and he had a large suite of four or five rooms. And it was an adjacent suite that attached to it sort of, and it was an optometrist there and my father became very friendly with the time optometrist over the years. And my mother always heard his grinding stone, grinding lenses. And she thought, my goodness, he must be very busy. This is a wonderful profession to be in, it’s much better than medicine. He’s just sees through people nice and clean, etc, etc. and but she didn’t always that he wasn’t doing well enough to get a water machine that would turn out ones as quickly. So in any way between that and between my mother and between the turbulent times and between the fact that certain aspects of optometry when I looked at her what attracted me, because you did have a chance to work with people. And it was pretty well as you know, in those days, Paul won mathematics and physics then it was biological, although I was very fortunate because the school, I went to was given courses in immunology when actually Harvard Medical School wasn’t teaching immunology wasn’t a great course. But it was a one-hour course for one semester. And we were really on a medical model. Because the person who really ran the school was a refugee from Austria, named Oto Hawkshaw who really was determined that optimally, we would grow and have time if he would become a medical discipline. So that’s why I went to Optometry school.

Paul Karpecki: That’s so great. So then you obviously have research, you’ve played a key role in the industry, you were developer, one of the top contact lenses that eventually was bought out you have been bended the lippie flow, the lippie view, but played a key role and central client clouding, understanding around contact lenses early on, how did the move get into those areas? This was just intrigue for you, as researchers something that seemed appealing that someone kind of mentor you in that direction, what led you down a path that was truly very different at that time for the average optometrist?

Donald Korb: Well, like most things had happened by accident. And the first accident was that in school, and I see we had an actual course and contact lenses taught by a man named Frederick Finem. And he was the first person in New England ever fit a contact lens. And he was rather well known, grumpy, but really did teach a reasonably good course we didn’t have any clinic associated with it. It was just a data course. But he was very diligent in teaching us. And you know, that was exciting to me. That was really exciting to me because it just brought out a whole different area. And then, when I graduated, I went into practice with a doctor who by accident was in the same building as Dr. Finem was actually flooding optometrists in the building that I went to Pratt went when I started practice, in that one large building and probably 150, dentists. Well, the practice that I went into, although primarily worked in various forms of visual training and orthotics, orthotics in those days, although it worked in that area, what was so interesting is that he also fitted contact lenses. And he really didn’t like it. So it has sort of fell over into me, and I know nothing about it. So that drove me with the passion to learn quickly about contact lenses and the successes that he had were just so dramatic. That I really became passionate. And that led me in the thinking. And before, you know, I had managed to come up with a plan for topography, I can see that we were doing was one, it should all be done by profiles. Because the eye really isn’t, the eye from an evolutionary point is still looking out. And that’s why we have a positive angle Kappa, so you have a profile. So the nasal limbus is pushed forward. And the temple limbus is pushed back because the eyes are really, really directed out. So I thought, well, how am I going to do that? Well, profile photography, so Polaroid Corporation was ruling the world. And they were just across the river from me in Cambridge. So I managed to get over there, I started chatting with people. And before you know, I had a research grant. And a little while later, I was director of ocular photography and dentistry, which was a big item. With that, and I really didn’t know a thing. I think I was probably 25 or 26 years of age. But anyway, about I started doing that research, and the passion that I had for that was rewarded by the fact that my professor Dr. Finem decided to retire. And although he didn’t like me now because I been in his building, and I was fitting contact lenses, he was egotistical, insensitive about that. He invited me up and he invited me to succeed him. Well, he had a large practice. So all of a sudden, I was about three years out of school. And I was seeing 20 contact lens patients a day. Plus, I had the Polaroid research behind me. And somehow another Dr. Finem used to determine whether lenses were fitting well by whether or not they steep in the cornea. And I thought there must be a better way and all of a sudden, my work of Polaroid came back to haunt me, because I used it to develop sclerotic scatter. And that was my first love. Because with that technique, I could actually see I could see very clearly what was what I termed central corner cloud what I named central corneal clouding. So anybody with the slit Nam could now see edema caused by a contact lens bangle. So that led very quickly to gas permeable lenses and on and on and on. And once I had central corneal clouding behind me, I was off, because I had a reputation was written up in many places, and, and my practice just grew, and I had more funds and more research. And that’s how it started, Paul.

Paul Karpecki: That’s great. That’s an accomplishment to be proud of it because it changed a lot of how we looked at things but contact lenses you’ve also named what eight ocular conditions, you know, including meibomian gland dysfunction mgd, which everybody you know utilizes this common volved in that lid wiper epitheliopathy, lid seal, which I think is critical to the future. It’s critical now but I mean, I think there’s gonna really start to understand because I have so many patients that I see per day where that’s the pathology, that’s been causing all the problems they just don’t see and having you know your testing with Dr. Blackie, the KV test all those kind of interventions along the way lid wiper epithelium empathy. What are you most proud of? Or does it all kind of run together?

Donald Korb: Yeah, we’ll have all kinds of lunch together. And it’s like a big dream. James Thurber wrote The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which most people now don’t know. But when I went to high school that was compulsory to read. And it was about dreams about how Walter Mitty this fictional character would dream about where he wanted to be. So I was just living that dream all the time. I mean, it’s almost like whatever I observed in the clinic in volatility, short period of time came to reality. What am I most proud? Well, Paul, I’d say that my first love there’s always a first love and that was central corneal clouding and putting together how to see that was just good fortune because of all my prior experiences I’ve just explained. It was, you know, the first love is your first love in life. And usually, whether it’s successful or not, we won’t go into that. But anyway, your first love is your first love. So central corneal clouding was really my First Love. Now the most exciting thing that I ever did the most exciting thing I ever did. Can you guess it?

Paul Karpecki: It’s got to be for in the dry eye world, the meibomian gland dysfunction for me, and maybe and that’s unbiased because for me that has such an impact in everything we do every day, it’s the most common diagnosis, we’re going to see. So maybe I’m leaving it because of, you know, my background in terms of how much it’s helped me, I’d have to think it’s in that category, whether I measurements or diagnostics or treatments.

Donald Korb: Well, you’re absolutely right, if we think medical optometry, but absolutely the most exciting thing that I ever did was before we had the presence, emphasis on medical optometry, and that was when I developed the first membrane contact lens. And I had this dream sitting in a lecture listening to Norman Beer in England, and he was pontificating about many things. He was the first person by the way, Paul, if offense straight, a scholar wins. Norman Beer. Yeah. And so I’m sitting in a relatively small audience of invited people, maybe 30 people who were invited to his prime lecture on our election. And I’m sitting there, and I’m saying he’s talking about pushing the eye out, what we need is what the rabbit has, we need an extra tuning membrane we need we need a visual device, which mimics that may contain a number and it’s got to be really clear, it should be as thin, it should be as thin as the epithelium, it should be three or four cells thick. So I embarked on that. And all of a sudden, when it was so difficult to fit a soft contact lens when they caused all sorts of troubles. You could take a CSI lens that was 30-40 microns thick, you could put in her eyeball. person won’t feel at it. Just look around, huh? What are you going to put up I can see? It couldn’t feel it was fantastic. And then they could wear it for 30 days and never take it off. And the lens when fog usually, I mean, it was just miraculous, just miraculous, by the way, that lens was never produced the way the prototypes were the way the studies were done, they could never make the parliament in an adequate quantity. So that was just so exciting. And then seeing it and seeing how it just changed the whole field. That was probably the most exciting thing that I’ve ever done, that I’m most proud of. But the most intellectually satisfying. And pragmatically something that will last forever, is what you’ve said meibomian glands and working with Tony Henriques, and this was a pathologist an ophthalmologist, pathologist, a PhD in glandular function, get all these credentials, and he was in Boston, to this day we’re very close friends, we speak at least once a month with Tony, which has worked out and that was the most certainly the most intellectually satisfying, because when you discovered it, and really don’t know, what you really discovered, because it has to get out to everybody before you really know the magnitude of what you’ve done. But when I discovered it, I was confident that that was the major cause of dry eye. In fact, the original article which we publish Paul, we told the treatment, we told the treatment was expression of the glands to remove the obstruction and that the treatment was warm compresses, take heat, and open up the glands. So I think that those are probably the most exciting and the things that I am more proud of. But I should point out that when you take lid wiper epitheliopathy, and you take all of these things, meibomian glands functions, lid seal, they have one thing in common. Now, if I’d mentioned to you a diamond is corneal foam formations. Have you ever heard of that? No, no. Well, I named that. And that’s the name that I coined. And when you had when you had to edema with rigid contact lenses, you got these little crazy linear formations. And they formed in the, at the basement membrane, because it was wrinkling of the basement membrane caused by the edema. And I named that condition, it’s gone. It doesn’t exist. I mean, somebody is knowledgeable as you have never heard of it. And why should you have rigid contact lenses and skulls don’t do it the same way skulls have a different action. So if you take everything that you’ve mentioned, and are my favorites in GPC, for instance, there’s another one, it takes all these things, they will not contact lens induced. They do the other reasons, and they will be here long after we’re gone and meibomian gland dysfunction will be here forever, lid wiper epitheliopathy will be here forever, on and on and on. So I think It’s very, very important to distinguish, to distinguish what makes something really, really, really, really important. And I think that is that it has universal and long-lasting value, that it’s not just a, it’s just not an invention or development, until there’s a better development, it’s something that students will be taught for a generation. So I don’t know whether that explains it, Paul.

Paul Karpecki: It really does. I was terrific. And, you know, thinking of it, you know, you discovered, essentially, the soft contact lens we all use today, you discovered the type of dry eye either the type of contributor to 86%, of all dry eye, technically, or even 90% has this element in it. So it’s the most common form of dry eye plus all the other forms, you know, what were the skills or insights that you either had or learned along the way that contributed to observing or to picking up on things like this, that are of such significant impact to our industry to our field?

Donald Korb: Most people credit me with being a good observer. And I probably am. But I take time to observe, I love to observe, it brings me great pleasure. It’s an intellectual. It’s an intellectual process. And if you ask, Well, what is intellectual? Well, the basic definition of an intellectual is really someone or an intellectual activity with a process of examination is going on, not to the object of the knowledge that it brings, but for the process itself. So an intellectual just examines anything for the sake of examining it. And I’ve been fortunate to try to temper that, that tendency that I have, and instead, try to be pragmatic about it. So in order to have your observations mean, anything, the first point about them is that it takes time. And the second point about it is you have to ask a question, why? Why do we see this? And once you ask the question, why? And if you’re persistent, and persistent is very important, you’ll ultimately come up with the answer. So I would say, that would be the first insight that I would have. And the second one would be, the ego. You really, really have to sublimate your ego. And why do you have to sublimate your ego because it gets you nowhere. I mean, you and I are not what we are, because we created ourselves, we were created differently, depending on how you believe in creation. But it took a man and a woman to make Paul Karpecki a normal cool. And we didn’t control that process. It was the random good luck if you come out well, it’s random poor luck, if you don’t come out as well. So we present knowledge, we can’t take credit for being an intellect, but what we can do is we can learn to sort of understand that and temper our ego. And we bought because from a pragmatic point of view, and a philosophic, not a philosophical view, but just a pragmatic point of view. What do we have to do? We have to collaborate with people. There are no more Leonardo da Vinci’s and why then are what Leonardo da Vinci? Because Leonardo da Vinci himself, could not master Ocular care. I mean, it’s just too big. And there’s just too many areas. You and I cannot specialize in 25 different areas, we can’t be a normal person, we can’t be this can’t be that. Yeah, we can know enough to infer we can be aware of it. But we certainly can’t be an expert in all of these areas. So our base of knowledge basically says that there be no more Leonardo da Vinci’s that we have to collaborate. And we really, really, really just have to sublimate on the ego and be able to work in a team. And I don’t know I ever shared with you the whole story with Bertrand Russell and his impact on society that I share that with you?

Paul Karpecki: I remember you mentioning his name, but I’d love to hear the insight or have the listeners hear the insight.

Donald Korb: Yeah, well, basically, he wrote a book the impact of science and society and published it in 1951. And, of course, what that books the most important point out of that book is that as we move forward with technology and knowledge, the impact it will have in society is just what’s happened. It will be more and more important in the first stage to have the knowledge but on the second stage, to be the manager of that knowledge, that you won’t be able to do yourself. He didn’t say Leonardo da Vinci. But that’s what he was really saying that you won’t be able yourself to do it because you need to put together teams. So the people who can put together the team, the person who can collaborate, the person who can do all that. That’s the person who will make the maximum contribution. So I think that collaboration is just so very, very important. But you can’t collaborate. If you, well, you can, but collaboration is greatly improved by aid is supported by having a great relationship with everything, and respecting everybody and not being an egomaniac is, unfortunately, many people are now it’s very, very difficult. That what I said, when I say okay, well, what was my first love? What am I most proud of? Well, people will say, well, that’s egotistical, he’s bragging, he’s done these things. But that’s reporting. And it’s very, very difficult. Just like I was taught by a great philosopher at Berkeley, actually, that the most difficult thing in life is to tell somebody you like them, or you love them, or you have a great affinity for them. And the reason is, because it’s a barrier, because people will wonder, why is the person doing that. So it’s a matter of communication. So it’s difficult, but the better the relationship you have in any collaboration, the faster the project will go. And I, and everybody knows that by default, but they don’t know what by design. And I was fortunate enough when I was a young person. I was probably in my 30s, when it all dawned on me. And I had read Bertrand Russell earlier, but I put it all together. And that’s the way I think. So that’s why I share because that’s that, because that’s what we should do.

Paul Karpecki: That’s great. So what are you working on today? Where are you putting your energies into? Are you able to share kind of where your focus is admins? is it taking on some of these great accomplishments already? Is it something kind of new as an extension? Where’s your energy being put in today, Donald?

Donald Korb: In order to answer that question, and I will answer it, we have to go back and think what’s wrong with that thinking. So if I would to ask you, and I have a great respect for you, because you’re a great clinician, and you have all this knowledge from all the people and companies you work with, which is a tremendous advantage. Because you’ve seen successes, you’ve seen failures, you’ve seen mediocre things. And I’m sure you know that if you work with 10 companies, or 10 companies working very, very hard. If one out of the 10 produces a relatively useful clinical product, everybody’s happy, or the investors are happy, because it’s not so easy to produce something that really works. So what I would like to do is just go back for a moment and say, What are the classical just two words, we have to understand Paul, categorization. And we also, we also have to understand in the broader picture, with categorization, we really have to understand the conceptualization that goes with it. So we have categorization, and we have conceptualization. So if we just talk about the categorization, and I would say, help me understand treatment. What is our goal? How should we think when we want to treat something? Okay. Were you ever taught that? And of course?

Paul Karpecki: Not specifically, I think.

Donald Korb: Not specifically, right? No, not specifically. And all that has been lost. And it’s basic, and it’s basic in the scientific literature 50 years ago. So without pontificating, I’ll just name quickly. The first point is cured. We all want to cure people, so it’s cured. And curative and restoration. You know, they’re a little bit different, but they may be restoration is a subgroup under the original curative. So we basically have curative, and then we can add restorative. And what else do we want to do when we are involved with treatment? Well, it’s generally agree in the classics, that palette of we have to provide comfort for people, we have to provide comfort to people, and what’s the third, prevention. So the three aspects of treatment by design should be curative, restorative, preventative, and pal limed. Now, you and I do that, by default, not by design. Correct. And whenever you do anything by default and not by design, it can never be as good as when you design. So before lid seal, people came in and you said, well do something. And, you know, a lot of people came back and said, Doctor, that only gonna work great. But a lot of people came back and said, the only one doesn’t work, right? So by default, your method of practice can never be as good as it is by design. You want to comment on that, Paul? Because that’s the basis of what I’m doing. And it’s important. So what do you think of that as a concept?

Donald Korb: I love the concept, you know, I’ve never intellectually looked at it. So specifically, I’ve just kind of that is what we’re doing. And when we have success, we do need all three elements. Because if you just, you know, worked on curative, but it returned, that didn’t help if you worked on something that was a cure, but it wasn’t comfortable for the patient, they’re not going to continue to use it. And if you tried to do the first two, but you didn’t allow it, you allowed it to come back, you’re really where you started again. So the three are brilliant, in terms of really what we try to do with every disease state we’re trying to manage.

Donald Korb: Now you can google treatment, how to treat and maybe one out of 15, we’ll have that model. Okay, but it has some time, it just isn’t taught. Okay. Now, in addition to that, Paul, there are many treatments, there are many treatments. And the treatments are subdivisions of other treatments are the mixture. So someone might say, Well, tell me about immune dry eye? Well, what do you want me to tell you about it? How do we want to treat it? Okay? Where does that fit into the entire thing is really dry eye caused by immune diseases, or did the immune diseases cause something else which causes the dry eye, so the immune diseases attack the meibomian glands, and the lacrimal gland, maybe. And then you have problems. But you have to be clear, and I thinking about what we’re doing, and I listened to people, and I just say, my goodness gracious. It’s a miracle people ever get well because they’re being treated by default, they’re not being treated by design. And, you know, I don’t expect every doctor or ophthalmologist your time, if it’s to go through a lengthy process. And as you have caught me and others who have taught me, you can actually be very, very exacting in the diagnosis and get all this information. But you can also with just your thumb, determined to somebody have mgd, you know, and does that really change the treatment? Well, it makes it more by default, rather than by design, but it’s still pretty good, still pretty good. So there’s all these things that we can do. So now let’s go back. So now what we want to do is what would the optimal treatment people do optimal treatment and stop me and correct me if anything isn’t clear, the optimal treatment would be one where we address all three of those areas. And we try to restore the meibomian glands as much as we can if we can. And of course, it’s nice to have my biography, so you can see what you’ve lost. So that’s just so, so critical. So we need, we need all those in one, we need to treat everybody with that. With all of those, we have to have all those multiple treatments, we have to stop evaporation from the eye, we have to worry about the lid wiper, we have to worry about lid seal, we have to we have to have something which addresses all of those things, okay, all those things, we have to make it simple, we have to apply it, where anybody can apply it to the eye isn’t a big, complicated thing to apply, it isn’t dangerous, etc, etc. And that maybe it has a maximum application twice a day or something like that, you set the limits. And now you go ahead, and then you design that optimal treatment. So you’ve got to use all the categories, Paul, all of the categories have to be in there. And you still need a diagnosis, the diagnosis is different. But you have to know that you have dry eye quotes, whatever dry eyes and dry eyes are for all things, but the name is never going to change. And it’s well, everybody understands. So that’s all that matters. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been working on developing a product that people can use that will be able to do that and do it efficiently. And I find that very exciting. Now that may be the most if it works. And if I’m successful, that may be the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. So it’s sort of a big, round and round story, but hopefully I answered your question.

Paul Karpecki: It did. And it’s a great combination of all this research, incredible number of publications, all they’ve done and putting it all together now, in those three key elements, but based on all of what you all for your work over decades to solve something that is significant if you think about the population. So last part last question, one of the things I’ve always admired about you is your ability to kind of look to the future, and maybe it’s that you’re just a great observer and because of that you are picking up on things in a good way, that then becomes the mainstay of whether it was the first you know, contact lens, soft contact lens that was comfortable that came out whether it was my biography, whether it was mgd, all these things. In fact, I think back in 2011, you had coin, you know, we asked a question like this, you said the dental model would be, you know, something that just makes sense for eye care where you come in and you have the procedures done. And then you also have something where you maintain it kind of like the going to see your dentist having a deep cleaning and then brushing and flossing. Do you still see that as the future for certain parts of eye care, like dry eye disease? Or what are you looking to down the road now for where we might be going?

Donald Korb: If you look at the dental model, Paul, it meets the treatment model of three, the palette of you know, the curative and the prevention, they are successful because they meet that model. And we don’t. And until we do, we’re never going to be totally effective. Well, it’s great to have this opportunity to chat with you because I could never get this published, you know, in a good journal, no matter how much I paid for it, I could never get it published. There is hope. So but the dentist is just so far ahead of us. And that Yeah, yes, the dental model is going to take over, we’ll have better and better products. But no matter what we do, no matter how good the products are, there will always be the need for you and I in a clinic room. Because we will have to determine of those three, which need the most attention, what preventive methods should be applied, because there’ll be a multitude of them, there’ll be multiple treatments, there’ll be all these different treatments, that’s what we have to do. So I think the future will be in that way, I think the future will be in the demo model for professionals. And I think that ultimately, it may even go into commercial optometry, because it gets simpler and simpler, it will be easier to implement part of the dem model in 30 seconds. And the quicker we the interestingly, the purpose of a profession, as taught in the Flexner Report, many, many years ago, when medicine became medicine, the purpose of the profession is to develop things and take them from an art make the science so strong, that those areas can become technical acts. So our own purpose, your purpose, and my purpose is to obsolete ourselves and make our sphere of influence smaller and smaller, we needed less and less and less and less. But there’s always more and more somehow another we haven’t reached that point. So I think that’s where we’re going, Paul.

Paul Karpecki: This was excellent, Donald, what a wonderful interview. Thank you for sharing so much so many insights, so many key pearls that can help people who are looking to do something similar or a new way to look at things that they haven’t before. And yes, you know, pointing out reporting the accomplishments is certainly not bragging. These are things that are that have changed how we all practice today. And we’re all grateful for that we would not have the industry we had today if it wasn’t for Donald Korb. So that’s still being extremely modest, as you always are, and humble. But it was wonderful to for you to take your time today to share with everybody wonderful to hear about really getting to know you even better. I feel I’ve known you for many years, and you’ve been so instrumental in so many of our practices and how we in optometry and ophthalmology practice today. But getting to know you at this level was a real treat. And thank you for doing so.

Donald Korb: I really appreciate the opportunity. And it was fun. I think I take home from the fact that you provided me with a platform where I could say what I wanted to say. And the fact that you know so much about these areas allow you to understand what was important and what wasn’t important. And have an open mind and listen to it. And know from my past record that is just an extension of what you said that it’s an extension of everything. That’s exactly what it is. And without that long background. I couldn’t think this way so, so thank you very much, Paul for the for that opportunity. I appreciate it.

Paul Karpecki: Thank you, Donald. It’s my pleasure. And I want to thank OIS for providing this opportunity. And thank all of you for listening today.