For your information

Our sponsoring, nonprofit, charity is The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation, an IRS 501(c)(3) approved Tax Exempt Charity. You can list any contributions to this organization on your US IRS Form 1040 Tax Schedule A under Charitable Contributions. Consult your individual State’s Tax Authority to determine if you may also take the deduction on your state income tax if there is one. If members wish to contribute, they may claim a taxable deduction on their contribution to the Foundation, dependent on the level of contribution you may receive a thank you gift. During the first month of the year after your contribution we will email or mail each contributor a summary statement for tax purposes.

Suggestion

If you do not currently possess a Yahoo ID & password linked to your email address, we strongly encourage you to obtain one before you join our group. This will enable you to manage your profile, message settings and any changes of your Internet Service Provider or email addresses. Yahoo prohibits anyone other than you to modify these settings. Without a Yahoo ID & password, you cannot control your message board experience.

You must agree to the following Copyright Notice, Terms & Conditions and the Legal Notice before you can apply for membership in our group. Please read the following page carefully and indicate your agreement or disagreement at the end of the page. This page was last updated on 4/26/2009. If there are subsequent changes made, all active members of Fuchs’ Friends will be notified of the changes by Special Notice on the Message Board. If a member declines those changes he or she must unsubscribe from the group. It is not necessary to specifically accept the changes; those who do not unsubscribe will be considered to have accepted the changes.

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2009 - The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this web site may, for commercial, profit-making or other non-personal purposes, be reproduced in any form, or stored in a database or retrieval system, or transmitted or distributed in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written or electronic permission of the The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation, a California Nonprofit Corporation.

Policy of Conduct

The following policies are non-negotiable. You must indicate your agreement to them after reading before requesting to join our group. If you cannot agree, please click the I Decline button at the bottom of the page.

Otherwise you will indicate your agreement when you click on the I Accept button at the end of the page.

In the event these policies are modified, we will notify you and you will have a chance to read the new policies and agree or disagree. If you disagree you will be automatically removed from the Fuchs’ Friends Group.

Medical Advice Guidelines

We, as individuals and as a group, do not give medical advice. If you are a Medical Doctor qualified in the subject in question you may advise if you identify yourself as a medical professional. We do relate to each other our individual experiences.
You, as a member, should not treat, medicate or use “alternative therapies” on yourself using information from Fuchs’ Friends or any other source without consulting your doctor about them.
We discourage “Doctor Bashing” however, to assist other members in finding competent eye care, members do relate negative experiences they’ve had in treatment.

General Information, Message Content and Harassment Guidelines

Our group is called Fuchs' Friends (FF), with members in all of the United States of America and over 40 other countries. We are a private group, not listed in the YahooGroups directory. Fuchs' Friends founded their first message board in 1999. Fuchs’ Friends is the original support group for Fuchs' Corneal Dystrophy.
We are connected to these groups only:

The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation.
FuchsFriendsUK
The Fuchs’ Corneal Dystrophy Group at www.yahoogroups.com,
Cornea Transplant Group website and also at www.yahoogroups.com
Fuchsorama, at www.yahoogroups.com

Fuchs' Friends owners founded The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation which is an IRS 501(c)(3) approved Tax Exempt Charitable organization. You can list any deductions to this organization on your Federal Income Tax Schedule A under Charitable Contributions
We encourage, but don't require, that you have a Yahoo ID linked to your email address so that you may more easily manage your Yahoo Groups logon, password, profile, message settings and changes in email addresses. We discourage members from sharing phone numbers with strangers. We take privacy seriously.
Fuchs’ Friends does not preach religion nor argue politics. Members must refrain from discussing religion or politics on our Sites and Message board because they are subjects that can cause serious and disruptive disagreements between members. Our mission is eye information and support.
We require members to agree to a privacy statement before joining.

You must promise that you will not use member's private email addresses without permission of the emailee.
If you are spammed, receive unwanted & unsolicited email from members or are harassed, let a Moderator or Owner know.
We report abusers to their ISP and Yahoo.

It is against the Fuchs' Friends Code of Conduct for any member of the group to use any other member's email address, without their express permission, for any purpose outside the group.

If any member is found to have misused another member's email address in such a manner, the offending member may be warned, "moderated" in their postings, have their membership suspended for a period of time, or even banned.
The leadership of Fuchs' Friends will make a decision as to what action to take, and such decision is not appealable.
If any member finds that their email address has been used for any purpose described above, please send a message to the Fuchs' Friends leadership at fuchsfriends-owner@yahoogroups.com with details.

The FF message board is private, for the personal use of Fuchs' Friends members and not available to the public under any circumstances.

You are not to provide anyone who is not a member of Fuchs’ Friends any of our Members’ Only URLs (web addresses).
Our public and private web sites are and always have been copyrighted under law and may not be copied in whole or in part without prior written permission from The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation.

The Owners of the Fuchs' Friends Message Board and the related websites may:

Delete any post or message they consider inappropriate, offensive or detrimental to the best interests of the group.
Privately email any member requesting that they refrain from actions that are considered by the Owners to be contrary to the best interests of the group.
Place any member on Moderated status.
Ban any member who fails to heed the advice or warning of the Owners.

Decisions made by the Owners are not subject to appeal or negotiation.

Updated 4/26/2009 RB

Legal Notice

This group provides on-line information for communication and support purposes only and the web sites should not be construed as medical advice.

Information published on this web site is not intended to replace, supplant, or augment a consultation with an eye-care professional regarding the viewer or user's own medical care, but to provide links to educational sites.

This group, including The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation, disclaims any and all liability for injury or other damages that could result from use of the information obtained from this site.

If you agree to abide by the Copyright Notice, Terms and Conditions and you accept the Legal Notice, indicate your acceptance by clicking on “I Accept” below and you will be taken to the Join Form which must be completely filled out.

If you decline, click on the “I Decline” below..