DEDHAM, Mass. — Ed Gillen, of Dedham, is a father of four, a 39-year state highway worker, and beloved softball coach.
He’s always been someone who has taken the lead in life, until he experienced sudden, complete darkness.
He suffers from permanent vision loss, which he attributes to taking a GLP-1. He was on the medication for about a year to manage his A1C levels, and then by May 2025 he was diagnosed with non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, a condition leading to irreversible blindness.
Gillen first noticed symptoms around Memorial Day in May 2025, when he woke up on a Saturday morning with what appeared to be a speck in his eye. Within two weeks, his vision rapidly deteriorated until he completely lost his sight in both of his eyes. “There’s no warning sign at all, there’s no pain; it just comes. It just comes,” Gillen said.
“I was completely blacked out.”
While aware of typical side effects mentioned in medical disclosures and commercial advertising, he said he was never informed that permanent vision loss was a possibility.
“I knew there were some. Because you hear it on the commercials, you hear an advertiser, your doctor tells you them, but not this. Not this,” Gillen said.
He added, “I want people to know that this is a thing and it’s real.”
Following his initial symptoms, Gillen underwent extensive medical testing, including MRIs, CT scans, and biopsies, before being evaluated by a neuro-ophthalmologist.
“He, ironically, was the doctor who discovered this, that ‘Ozempic blindness’ is a thing, and he ran me through all kinds of tests and said, uh, yeah. This is definitely symptoms of taking the GLP-1 Ozempic,” Gillen said.
The sudden loss of sight forced Gillen to step away from his position operating machinery for the state highway department, a job he held for nearly four decades. To learn adaptive skills for independent living, Gillen attended the Carroll Center for the Blind. “I was very good at my job. And now I got to learn this, a new job of being blind,” Gillen said.
Reflecting on the network of family and friends who assisted him through the transition, he added, “Without them? I’m not here today.” Through his participation in the consolidated lawsuit, Gillen aims to raise public awareness of potential risks associated with GLP-1 medications.
“No, they’re there just like me. It’s not gonna happen to me; it was not gonna happen to me. Wow, don’t think like that because everybody is at risk,” Gillen said.
The lawsuit joins multiple similar actions consolidated before a federal judge in Pennsylvania. The claims allege that Novo Nordisk failed to adequately warn patients and medical providers that GLP-1 drugs could cause severe optic nerve damage and blindness. In response to similar claims, Novo Nordisk stated that it conducted its own internal safety studies and found no increased risk of vision loss associated with the medication.
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