Evil eye doctors and myopia

[Joseph Hollaway OD]

Hey, anyone need a good laugh? Check out the website myopia.org, this guy is an A-1 nutjob. By his definition, anyone who spends most of their life reading at close will become nearsighted and the EVIL eye doctors are just making the situation worse by prescribing glasses for this condition. I wish I could ask him why he didn't also start a association for the prevention of presbyopia or hyperopia, aren't these people suffering too??

 

[Jeremy Ernstes]

Axis of Evil?!?!

this website is a complete joke! i agree, total nutjob. never in my life could i have imagined i would be part of the "axis of evil", just one of the henchmen of the FDA and other regulatory groups! very funny read, i just hope this doesnt get in the wrong hands....

 

[Gary R. Bell]

This guy's been around a long time (Donald Rehm.) He invented a clunky device that eliminated accommodation and convergence during reading called the myopter. It was a commercial flop.

I kind of agree with him about the research by Karla Zadnik and Christina Wildsoet. The studies they have been doing are repeats of studies done in the fifties and sixties, and they are getting similar results. I guess we know the results are repeatable. That's something, but not much.

But, that's about all I agree with him about. He doesn't seem to think the other refractive errors are a problem, and we all know they are. And, most of us know that myopia isn't a purely environmentally produced problem. The genetic connections will not go away. So, Donald Rehm, give it a rest!

 

[Ken Elder]

This guy's been around a long time (Donald Rehm.) He invented a clunky device that eliminated accommodation and convergence during reading called the myopter. It was a commercial flop.

I kind of agree with him about the research by Karla Zadnik and Christina Wildsoet. The studies they have been doing are repeats of studies done in the fifties and sixties, and they are getting similar results. I guess we know the results are repeatable. That's something, but not much.

But, that's about all I agree with him about. He doesn't seem to think the other refractive errors are a problem, and we all know they are. And, most of us know that myopia isn't a purely environmentally produced problem. The genetic connections will not go away. So, Donald Rehm, give it a rest!

I noticed that he updated the picture on the main web page but that child looks like he's wearing plus lenses, the very lenses he advocates.

In the past, the picture was a black and white photograph of a young girl which, judging from her hairstyle and dress was taken in the 1940s. She also looked like she was wearing about +6.00s.

A very weird man.

 

[Merrill Bowan]

I noticed that he updated the picture on the main web page but that child looks like he's wearing plus lenses, the very lenses he advocates.

He told me he used the picture because the kiddo was cute...so much for integrity....

 

[Sean Claffie]

Stop the Slaughter!

This guy's a little dramatic with his conspiracy theories. Anyone else confused about what the "coats" of the eye are? As the rest of you have pointed out, Mr. Rhem fails to address presbyopia and astigmatism. $50 for OTC SV reading glasses and I'm the charlatan?

Certainly we can agree that myopia has two factors: genetics and environment. His Myopter seems like it would address two of the three items in the near triad: convergence and accommodation. But then again, so do bifocals and PALs. With convention presbyopic correction for prebyopes, the patient can no longer physiologically accommodate and the add power eliminates the need for accommodation yet the adds are still decentered nasally relative to the distance PD. Why? Obviously the stimulus to accommodate is still present. So maybe there is something to his Myopter but good luck getting someone to wear one. The Oakley-Young study he cites supports the use of bifocals. The better compromise it seems, would to be careful not to overminus patients and to put everyone into multifocals starting age four or so. I could live with that but people would have to see the evil eye doctor.

 

[Ken Elder]

This guy's a little dramatic with his conspiracy theories. Anyone else confused about what the "coats" of the eye are? As the rest of you have pointed out, Mr. Rhem fails to address presbyopia and astigmatism. $50 for OTC SV reading glasses and I'm the charlatan?

Certainly we can agree that myopia has two factors: genetics and environment. His Myopter seems like it would address two of the three items in the near triad: convergence and accommodation. But then again, so do bifocals and PALs. With convention presbyopic correction for prebyopes, the patient can no longer physiologically accommodate and the add power eliminates the need for accommodation yet the adds are still decentered nasally relative to the distance PD. Why? Obviously the stimulus to accommodate is still present. So maybe there is something to his Myopter but good luck getting someone to wear one. The Oakley-Young study he cites supports the use of bifocals. The better compromise it seems, would to be careful not to overminus patients and to put everyone into multifocals starting age four or so. I could live with that but people would have to see the evil eye doctor.

ONe of the things that I have never heard adequately explained by those who support a strict environmental view of myopic progression is why myopic progression seems to stop between the ages of 18 and 22. We all have people in their 20s and 30s who are computer engineers, lawyers, accountants etc. etc. who's myopic progression has arrested even though they are still doing a TREMENDOUS amount of near work. Why?

 

[Sean Claffie]

ONe of the things that I have never heard adequately explained by those who support a strict environmental view of myopic progression is why myopic progression seems to stop between the ages of 18 and 22. We all have people in their 20s and 30s who are computer engineers, lawyers, accountants etc. etc. who's myopic progression has arrested even though they are still doing a TREMENDOUS amount of near work. Why?

Ken, o-b-v-i-o-u-s-l-y the "coats" of the eye have stopped stretching.

 

[Steven Nelson]

A few questions:

1) Is all of that research supporting peripheral defocus just wrong?
2) Why then do emmetropes/hyperopes not fall apart given the same accommodative stimuli?
3) Why does ortho-K slow or eliminate the progression?

 

[Ken Elder]

Ken, o-b-v-i-o-u-s-l-y the "coats" of the eye have stopped stretching.

Why?

 

[Merrill Bowan]

Not quite....

His Myopter seems like it would address two of the three items in the near triad: convergence and accommodation.

He told me that because there were no prisms to control for vergence, each kid had to learn to fuse the diplopic images together.

That just now makes me wonder if his myopter worked due to oculocardiac reflex-stimulated vagal effects upon the PNS. (Musin')

 

[Sean Claffie]

Why?

Exactly, why? He doesn't address it.

 

[Sean Claffie]

He told me that because there were no prisms to control for vergence, each kid had to learn to fuse the diplopic images together.

It seems that the Myopter user wouldn't converge at all--so is the stimulus to accommodate due to the visual presence of the object or some other sensation of the proximity? If the Myopter actually works, it must be visual presence. His diagram shows mirrors and beamsplitters--depending on the angles of the mirrors, one could engineer-in some convergence/divergence. Also, in the Myopter description I read about (I couldn't bear to read his entire website) the PD for the variable objective lenses is fixed so his Myopter is not without flaws.

That just now makes me wonder if his myopter worked due to oculocardiac reflex-stimulated vagal effects upon the PNS. (Musin')

Now you're just showing off.

 

[Merrill Bowan]

It seems that the Myopter user wouldn't converge at all--so is the stimulus to accommodate due to the visual presence of the object or some other sensation of the proximity? If the Myopter actually works, it must be visual presence. His diagram shows mirrors and beamsplitters--depending on the angles of the mirrors, one could engineer-in some convergence/divergence. Also, in the Myopter description I read about (I couldn't bear to read his entire website) the PD for the variable objective lenses is fixed so his Myopter is not without flaws.

Don told me in a phone call that fusion was a problem -- the beamsplitters gave the kids cyclopean vision, perhaps, but the change in AC/A due to loss of accommodation (he pushed +3.00's as I recall) may have put too much demand on unlearning fusional vergence for some. Proximal vergence cannot be easily dismissed: "While proximal vergence has traditionally been considered secondary,1 recent studies indicate that this vergence component can contribute substantially. Using both clinical2, 3 and haploscopic3 methods, proximal vergence was found to comprise up to 70% of the steady state near vergence response. "Magnitude and Velocity of Proximal Vergence" Bruce Wick and Harold E. Bedell

It was a doomed idea nonetheless. So are pinhole glasses.

...though, a Mom suggested that one clinic is using pinhole glasses top reduce ADHD manifestations...kinda like horse blinders, I guess.