William Shatner appeal - 2008
February 2008
Dear friends,
Nothing in life prepared me for the experience of tinnitus. One day, while filming the episode “Arena” for my television series Star Trek, I was standing too close to a special effects explosion. The blast robbed me of some hearing and left me with screeching tinnitus that I have endured ever since. You know what I mean when I say that tinnitus affects everything in one’s life; you know how those first months of living with tinnitus are. No words adequately explain the agony.
It’s been many years since that dreadful accident. With ATA’s help and the right treatment I’ve learned to push my tinnitus into the background, at least on most days. I never realized how valuable silence was until that blast took it from me. ATA is working to give back silence to all of us! Its committed staff and volunteers need and deserve our help. Did you know that ATA is the only association of its kind in the world that makes it possible for individuals to band together to fund research for a cure? When I developed tinnitus, a cure seemed like a remote possibility. Today, the world’s best researchers are very optimistic that a cure is on the horizon!
David Fagerlie, chief executive officer of ATA, recently visited me at my office in Los Angeles. He calls tinnitus the malady of the 21st century because it increasingly disturbs the lives of more and more people. He shared with me the brutal fact that tinnitus is the number one disability of soldiers injured in the global war on terror. These young men and women doing battle to protect our freedom often come home with sounds they can’t escape and will probably have forever, unless we are successful in our fight to cure tinnitus. David told me that even young children develop tinnitus from exposure to loud sounds. He noted a recent study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, which found that nearly 13 percent of all American children have hearing damage from noise exposure alone! Hundreds of thousands – maybe a million or more – may have tinnitus from those injuries.
David cares deeply about this growing epidemic and is determined to bring silence back into our lives. He readily admits that he and ATA can’t do that without our help. Will you help me fight this important fight? My years on television and movie sets of Star Trek, were full of daring adventures that saved planets from evil empires. But even Captain Kirk couldn’t do that without the loyalty and performance of his crew. Think of ATA as a real-life starship and we are the crew leading it toward accomplishing its vital mission.
The future is in our hands. Will we be satisfied with a few dollars going into research, making a cure possible in the next generation or two? I say NO! We have a way to speed the rate of discovery now. Let’s take action together. Please join me in making a very generous donation to ATA so that we are doing what we can to bring back silence in our lifetime.
Please go to ATA's donation page and give enough so that you really feel you are making a special contribution to create a better life for yourself and for the millions upon millions of others who are counting on ATA to make a difference. Thank you so very much.
Sincerely,
William Shatner
Member, Honorary Board
American Tinnitus Association
Click the image to see a video message from William Shatner!
