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April 18, 2005
Treatment vs. enhancement
William Saletan has an interesting article in Slate about the use of LASIK as a sports performance aid. According to Saletan, many athletes are using LASIK to have their vision improved beyond 20/20. It seems to be reasonably common to achieve 20/15 or 20/10 vision, prompting even people who's vision is fairly normal (20/30 or so) to get LASIK as a performance enhancement, even going ack for retreatment if they're not satisfied with the results. As I've said before, this line is going to get harder and harder to draw as medicine improves.Posted by ekr at April 18, 2005 7:23 AM | Filed under:
Comments
My vision corrects to about 20/7 (6/2 in metric) with glasses, and I absolutely would not settle for anything less. I'm actually 20/30 without my glasses, and perfectly legal to drive or fly like that, but I feel blind by comparison (no way would I try flying a plane uncorrected, it's hard enough to spot traffic).
What would worry me about LASIK is not getting to 20/7, which would be a net loss for me. I can see the aberrations in point light sources at night, so there does seem to be further room for improvement, but it seems a bit risky.
Posted by: Andrew McGregor at April 18, 2005 3:18 PM