American Medical Association backs classification of nearsightedness as disease | Hacker News Reader

American Medical Association backs classification of nearsightedness as disease

aao.org

18 pointsplun99 comments

My kid wasn’t progressing quite as well as their older sibling at a young age. They would trip over things and not be as interested in certain play activities. Dark under eye circles were also more pronounced (straining).

During a checkup, they had the option for an eye screening (basically an iPhone app) that takes pictures and flags possible issues. The concerning part was that the nurse’s default was to offer to “skip” this exam since it wasn’t covered by insurance and many parents chose to for financial reasons.

We didn’t skip it, and it found the need for a correction. The first time with the glasses on still brings tears to my eyes rewatching the video. “I see everything!” as they went to look at everything they were missing. The under eye circles also resolved immediately after.

The developmental delays aren’t even the biggest issue. Your eyes learn to work together at a young age, and skipping the glasses can lead to permanent eye issues if not addressed early. Many children likely have a permanent disease that a checkbox and cheap pair of glasses would have prevented.

This is long overdue and in no world should we be training health care providers that early age eye health is “skippable”.

This reads as classic shilling to me. There are companies that sponsor the industry association, who have a strong interest in people choosing to treat with their products. One of those companies, Essilor, _just happens_ to have their expensive proprietary product named specifically as the first intervention.

The "task force on myopia" that published the white paper this press release references is made up almost exclusively of people who had to disclose financial ties to industries that will directly profit from childhood nearsightedness being reclassified from a normal thing that you fix with glasses into a disease with a recommended (and expensive) treatment protocol.

Calling simple myopia a disease feels like a push to get insurance companies to cover basic vision care, but calling half the human population "diseased" seems like standard medicalization creep.

Almost no myopia in hunter-gatherer populations. I don't view it as "disease" but it's not physiological state either.

I don't think you'd make it far as a hunter-gatherer if you had physiological myopia. Both of my parents are severely nearsighted (my dad around -4 or -5, my mom is worse than -8), and all of my siblings have myopia. It's definitely genetic too, but for less severe myopia, I think it's our environment.

The biggest fix gets the fewest words - more sunshine

Well sure, because everybody already knows exactly what "spending at least two hours a day outdoors" means, whereas things like "Orthokeratology" need a bit more explanation since not many people have heard of that before.

That's a very literal reading, but ok - sunshine is the biggest and cheapest fix/antidote and yet it falls to the bottom of the list below treatments, insurance, screening...

Cynically, below things that need Opthalmologists. I am personally grateful to them, and about to go into eye surgery tomorrow, so I'm not actually cynical, but the biggest treatment getting the fewest words is about bias and partiality if anything.

Agreed. My optometrist told my kids that even bringing the iPad outside is beneficial.

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