Dr James Muecke AM is an Adelaide-based ophthalmologist with over 35 years of experience, having practised all over the world in countries Kenya, Jerusalem, and London. 

Through his profound experience, James has taught the diagnosis and management of eye cancer in ten countries in Asia. He founded the not-for-profit organization Sight For All in 2008, turning his boundless energy into a fight against blindness in the Aboriginal and mainstream communities of Australia and some of the poorest countries of the world. Sight For All’s comprehensive and sustainable projects are now impacting the lives of over one million people each year. 

His commitment to social impact and humanitarian endeavours has earned him several awards, including:

• Order of Australia in 2012,  
• Australian Medical Association’s President’s Leadership Award in 2013,  
• Ernst & Young’s Social Entrepreneur for Australia in 2015. 
• and in 2020, James was awarded Australian of the Year 2020 for his 32 years of humanitarian work. He is using this powerful platform to raise awareness of our poor diet, laden with sugar, which is devastating the health of Australians. 

 In this episode, Dr James shared the incredible journey that led him to become a world-renowned ophthalmologist and 2020 Australian of the Year. We deep-dived into the amazing impact his not for profit, Sight for all, is having globally, which has the ultimate mission to create a world where everyone can see.  

Using his platform as Australian of the year, James is passionate about educating the world on the root cause of diabetes and prevent looming health catastrophes. In addition, he wants to challenge our perception and our relationship with sugar,  as he states that "Sugar is as toxic and addictive as nicotine".  

He walked us through the growing cases of type 2 diabetes and ways to avoid this. We also spoke about one of his patients, Neil, who, as a result of his extreme sugar intake, led to Neil waking up one morning completely blind and lead to 9 separate amputation operations. The negative effects that sugar has on our health and the correlation between sugar and blindness is confronting.

James also shared his thoughts on what the future looks like for the human race if we keep going down the path of fast food, sugars, alcohol etc.