EYE DOCTORS AND THEIR FLAWED EDUCATION

The well-intended advice is occasionally given that more headway could be made in convincing doctors to change their ways by toning down the criticism and using reason instead. Sadly, their greed and self-imposed ignorance are stronger than any reasoning. Change will not come through reasoning with doctors. It will come when people learn how they are being manipulated and demand an end to it. When tobacco companies use every trick they can to get people to smoke, in spite of the untold misery that smoking has caused, a person still has a choice of smoking or not smoking. But what choice does a child have when the eye doctor prescribes minus lenses and nothing is said about choices? There is no warning on the glasses stating, "This product may destroy your vision."

Our statement that optometrists are getting a flawed education has been questioned by several people, so a little test was conducted. An appointment was made to visit a local optometrist, a young lady who graduated a few years ago from the Pennsylvania College of Optometry. The discussion went something like this:

Question: I'd like to talk to you about Myopia Prevention.
Answer: I can't give you more than 15 minutes.
Question: Here's my card. Have you ever heard of IMPA?
Answer: No.
Question: Here's a copy of the book, The Myopia Myth. Have you ever heard of it?
Answer: No.
Question: Here's the patented Myopter and the paper about it that was published in the American Journal of Optometry in May, 1975. Have you ever heard about it?
Answer: No.
Question: Do you have any idea what all these things I have placed on the table have in common?
Answer: No.
Question: Don't you see that they are all tools that are useful in preventing myopia?
Answer: No. I was taught in school that the way we use our eyes has nothing to do with the development of myopia and I plan to follow that teaching.
Question: They've really done a job on you, babe. That didn't even take 15 minutes, did it?
Answer: No.

Her ignorance would only have been emphasized further if she had been asked if she had ever heard of Francis Young, who has had more meaningful myopia research ignored by the eye doctors than any other human. The answer would certainly have been another "no." If this isn't a flawed education, what is? The deans of the schools of optometry should be ashamed to show their faces in public, knowing that they are serving as midwives at the birth of these uncaring ignoramuses who are preying on the public under the mantle of professionalism and destroying the vision of hundreds of millions of children while basking in their doctor title.

No one who is concerned about the health-destroying effects of tobacco could ever become the head of a tobacco company. That job requires an individual with the kind of mind that can ignore such humane considerations and focus solely on maximum profits. Similarly, no one who is concerned about the health-destroying effects of minus lenses could ever become the dean of a school of optometry. That job requires an individual with the kind of mind that can ignore such humane considerations and focus solely on the profits that come from selling the products of the optical industry.

Until this exploitation of the people of the world comes to an end, it will be necessary to continue exposing doctors and their inexcusable actions to a growing international audience.

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