Meow, kittehs.
Today, a bit of a rant. Or rather, sweeping up the pieces of a rant that exploded all over various darling screens yesterday.
All of it because of some completely insane optometry meddling with child eyes.
Here’s the e-mail that kicked it all off:
Dark clouds on the horizon, I see.
All the things wrong with this, it’s hard to know where to even begin.
This is what I had posted in our Facebook group yesterday:
3 Year Old Child “Diagnosis” –> This Stuff Makes Me ANGRY
*** RANT WARNING ***
Check out those results below. What on earth is going on there?! One “”””ophthalmologist”””” says -2 diopters, the next one says -1 diopters. Double the diopters vs half? What do those guys do, throw dice in that office of theirs? Not to mention that 1 diopter isn’t even myopia and shouldn’t be corrected in a 3 year old. @#$!@#!!!
But that’s not remotely enough of stupid. The range for the left eye is from -0.75 (again, what is that even on the table for) to +0.50. PLUS. Really? So Herr Doctor, now she’s hyperopic by half diopter in one eye, and you want to give her minus AND plus lenses.
Morons, would be putting it kindly.
And I can’t even comment on the proposed astigmatism correction without having a minor beardly fit.
FOUR DIOPTERS OF CYLINDER. REALLLY.
If you know what 4 diopters of correction looks like, nevermind it being directional, do you think this child would recognize her mother, or not run into every door frame at -4 diopters of uncorrected astigmatism?
I’m going out on a limb here and just say that this last-of-the-living eye gurus is the actual better option than going to those hack “””””ophthalmologists””””.
This 3 year old doesn’t have a medical condition. This 3 year old doesn’t have hyperopia. Or myopia. Or 4 diopters worth of astigmatism. Even without looking in person, pretty sure this is the on-point assessment.
Moral of the story: Always get multiple opinions. If those opinions diverge greatly, activate your hmmmmm-beacon. Learn how to do your own visual acuity assessments at home. Don’t blindly (heh) trust anybody, no matter what fancy title some for-profit university sold them. Once the child wears those lenses, you’re absolutely going to have serious ongoing progressive myopia problems!
Grrr.
Sums it up nicely.
And some of the comments in the resulting thread, also enlightening (or alarming, rather):
And you wonder who/what is causing the global myopia epidemic.
Meanwhile in some other thread some f*ckwit optometrist is questioning whether our group is legit, whether what we’re doing is legal (uhm, yea it is, though what optometry is doing shouldn’t be).
I let the optometrists go on for a while, since you never know. Some come around to sanity, logic, reason, and clinical science. Others can’t quite close the gap between that and what they learned in school and what they’ve been telling their “patients”.
Myopia isn’t an illness, lens-monkeys. It’s a refractive state.
Days like this, an old guru struggles. Is there even a point? Is humanity collectively too stupid/lazy/ignorant to bother with? Are we just going to flush ourselves down the toilet of evolution any number of ways, with our nukes and wars and climate change and genetic engineering and AI drone goals and literally making ourselves blind (or very blurred-like, same thing for practical purposes)?
Either way. At least the kids should get a choice in the matter.
So old McCrankypants uploaded a quick video ranting about dumb-beyond-rational-plausibility ophthalmologists:
For every one parent who sees this, about 50 million won’t.
Le sigh.
Also fun is that for every 100 optometry industry insiders who hear about endmyopia, at least half would like to see us shut down. The other half shrug and go whatever, another Internet idiot. And about three closet-hippie stragglers go, hmmmm. Something to all this talk of science and biology.
And there’s literally almost nothing in any of it for your favorite old guru. Already made the FU money, already not interested in fame, being right is generally a futile endeavor. And definitely not saving the world.
So whatever. Just take care of your kids, take them for health checkups. But perhaps be wary of any “genetic” issues “diagnosed” by people with ever special titles bestowed on them through institutions sponsored by corporate interests. People with said special institutional authority titles, hoping to turn a profit selling you a lifetime’s worth of their “treatments”. Treatments created by the corporate interests who sponsor the institutions that give out the titles.
At the very least Google Scholar all that sh*z first, before signing up for all of that.
Cheers,
-Jake
