A Californian doctor has revealed that you can turn naturally brown eyes into… naturally blue ones. Goodbye coloured contacts!
Dr Gregg Homer has been working on this laser technology for ten years, and says that turning brown eyes blue is possible because even brown eyed folks have blue eyes under that brown layer of pigment.
“We use a laser, and it’s tuned to a specific frequency to remove the pigment from the surface of the iris,” he said to KTLA News in Los Angeles. The procedure is expected to take about 20 seconds.
How it works is that the laser energy will be absorbed by the eye’s brown pigment. The pigment’s tissue will then change, and the body sheds the altered tissue in two to three weeks time, leaving the patient with blue eyes. The brown tissue supposedly never regenerates, making the process irreversible. The procedure has been estimated to cost around US$5,000.
While Dr Homer still has another year of research to complete on the procedure, researchers believe that it will be available outside of the US in 18 months, and within the US in three years.
Coloured contacts have been all the rage in Singapore lately, with many teenagers even selling them online to avoid the higher prices offered by optometrists. However, the trade of coloured contacts online was dealt a blow in July this year, when the Health Science Authority (HSA) issued a warning on counterfeit lenses.
The fakes, known as FreshLook ColorBlends, were discovered when shops sent their older stock back to the manufacturer for exchange. The company made a report to the HSA when it was unable to authenticate the stock.
Over 100 boxes of counterfeit contact lenses from at least five optical stores were seized in raids.
In spite of this, Singaporeans are still sticking to their coloured contact lenses over a permanent cosmetic procedure. Vic, a frequent cosplayer and user of coloured contacts, said that she would not have the procedure done.
“I want different colours, so I will stick to contacts,” she said.
University student Jeremiah Francisco gave a variety of reasons opposing the procedure. “It is invasive, permanent, and we don’t know if there are any long term side effects. It’s probably expensive, but even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t dare to get it done,” he said. Other Singaporeans polled also mentioned that the price of the procedure would be the deciding factor for them.
Nonetheless, given the Singaporean penchant for different coloured eyes, perhaps we’ll see a deluge of blue eyes in our streets once the procedure hits our shores.
