FDA study on LASIK

Issue: June 25, 2011

To the Editor:

I completely agree with Dr Lindstrom’s commentary “Thoughts on LASIK, complications and the FDA study of the procedure,” published in the March 25, 2011, issue of Ocular Surgery News (page 3). Having performed the procedure for 15 years, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative effect that it has had on the lives of my patients, many of whom have been my closest friends and family members. Included in the latter are two of my children, one of whom is now an ophthalmologist. His comment after undergoing the procedure, “I feel like I’ve been let out of jail,” is typical of the views of these patients.

If the FDA of 1980 had been swayed, as Dr. Waxler has, by the negative testimony of a miniscule percentage of treated patients, then hundreds of millions of the earth’s inhabitants would have since been deprived of the incredible benefits of IOLs, including my mother, father, mother-in-law, father-in-law and wife. What’s that you say? The FDA of 1980 was indeed of such a mind, and the technology escaped a ban only because of the testimony of television’s beloved Marcus Welby, MD (actor Robert Young)?

This is amazing stuff, and just another example (as if we needed any) of one more bureaucracy that is capable of deterring advances in our society. The unanswered question is as follows:

Based on the premise that the government must protect us from ourselves in more ways than we can imagine, how many advances are either delayed or simply don’t happen, and what is the real cost of this to the health and well-being of all of our citizens?

Richard J. Mackool, MD
Director, Mackool Eye Institute
Astoria, N.Y.