Jeff Weiz Car Accident Recovery

As some of you may know, our dear friend Jeff Weiz was seriously injured in a car crash in Malaysia. His taxi driver fell asleep on the freeway, drifted into a median ditch and rolled the car several times. Jeff was hurled out of a broken window, and suffered several fractured lumbar vertebrae, as well as other contusions, abrasions and soft tissue damage. Jeff's luggage was scattered across the highway and destroyed. It took nearly an hour for the ambulance to arrive while he lay in the grass.

Jeff is lucky to be alive, and is now in stable condition, after transferring from the local government hospital to a private hospital in Kuala Lumpur. For the next 3 months, he will be wearing a back brace, on pain management, and his mobility will be severely limited.

As many of you know, Jeff suffers from a condition called Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (vEDS), which makes his soft tissue including his blood vessels fragile, prone to rupturing and causing internal bleeding. He is one of the few people in the world to have survived an aortic dissection - the rupture of the single largest blood vessel in the human body. As a result of his lifelong struggle with vEDS, Jeff has developed skills as a brilliant bio-hacker who takes immaculate care of his body with advanced formulations and supplementation protocols he developed for himself. Many people in the rare illness community follow his work, and reach out to him for guidance on how to manage their conditions. He's also developed formulations for many other conditions, and frequently gives free consultations to those that need help.

This current challenge is one of the more difficult ones Jeff has faced. He is a tough cookie, but the accident comes at a time when Jeff is particularly financially vulnerable. Jeff is in Malaysia working on a stem cell startup project, in addition to a 501c3 for targeted gene editing, as well as a formulation company back in SF focused on harm reduction. These projects, which have the potential to help many people, are physically and financially demanding. Jeff was already spread thin, and now with mounting out-of-pocket hospital bills, he's worried about staying afloat for the next 3 months without his body, his work and his life falling apart. He needs our help to be able to focus on his recovery.

To quote his friend Simone: “If you know Jeff, you know he gives it all every single day. I've wondered if it's an attitude that stems from living with a degenerative disease that could kill you at any moment. Being so close to your own mortality must make one viscerally value the time they have here, and Weiz truly vies to get the most out of every day. I see him pour everything he has into his projects and his community. I know that when I've come to him with a good idea, he would support me in making it a reality, and when I've come to him in a time of financial need, he always gave. I know I'm not the only one in his community who's had that experience. This is a great opportunity for us - let's come together to support him now in his own time of need!”

Jeff needs money to pay for hospital bills, temporary living accommodations while he regains mobility, medicine, physical therapy, and replacement of his personal effects and electronics, which got destroyed during the crash. Anything in excess of these costs will be put towards his continued research and development into in-vivo gene editing therapies.