Finally, a Drug Company Listens to People with Hearing Loss

<p>In a day and age when it feels like there are drugs for everything—from restless legs to toenail fungus to stage fright—it's strange the drug industry has almost completely ignored one of our most important organs: our ears. Given that 15 percent of people in the U.S. report at least some level of hearing loss, you’d think drug makers would be doing more to figure out how they can help. Well, now there’s at least one company that is. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Decibel Therapeutics went public in 2021 to help raise money to fund its research on ways to treat a specific form of deafness caused by a rare genetic mutation. Decibel is testing a gene therapy that would be administered only to cells in the inner ear and would provide patients with a correct, working copy of the otoferlin gene, which is inactive in about 10 percent of kids born with auditory neuropathy. Harry's guest this week is Decibel’s CEO Laurence Reid, who explains how the company’s research is going, and how Decibel hopes to make up for all those decades when the pharmaceutical business had basically zero help to offer for people with hearing loss.</p><p><strong>Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! </strong>Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:</p><p><strong>1. </strong>Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. </p><p><strong>2. </strong>Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.</p><p><strong>3. </strong>Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."</p><p><strong>4. </strong>Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."</p><p><strong>5. </strong>Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars. </p><p><strong>6. </strong>Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text bo