Suzanimal
10-30-2016, 09:18 AM
This Halloween, scores of consumers have purchased nearly 100,000 pairs of "counterfeit, illegal, and unapproved” colored contacts for costumes, all of which have been seized by “Double Vision,” an FDA-led consumer safety campaign.
No one is at risk from purchasing lenses from third-party contact lens vendors. Not surprisingly, optometrists and their favored lens manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson are using this news hook as a means of inciting fear. They are now stepping on the gas of their congressional lobbying efforts so that their bill, The Contact Lens Consumer Health Protection Act (CLCHPA), is passed into law.
The CLCHPA’s objective is to rid the country of the free market reforms brought about by The Fairness in Contact Lens Consumer Act (FCLCA), a 2003 bill that opened the contacts lens industry to free market competition for the first time.
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Enraged, optometrist associations and contact lens vendors like Johnson & Johnson immediately began lobbying Congress to change the law. For the past decade, they have been claiming that these third-party vendors are jeopardizing the eye safety of millions of Americans. Specifically, they have expressed concern that these lenses pose a risk of developing keratitis, an eye infection affecting the cornea.
For these reasons, members of the medical lobby drafted the CLCHPA, a new bill that will greatly increase regulations in the contact lens industry, making it extremely difficult for third-party lens vendors to stay in business.
The bill is a solution in search of a problem. It will re-capture the contact lens industry and propel prices upwards, all while failing to increase safety even the slightest degree.
It is ridiculous that some doctors are correlating buying contact lenses from reputable third-party companies like Costco, Walmart, and 1-800 Contacts with purchasing them illegally from a Halloween street vendor.
For one, the lenses sold by third-party sellers are federally regulated. You still need a prescription to purchase contact lenses from online sellers (although numerous studies, as well as practices in other nations, have shown that even prescriptions are not necessary), and doctors still have the ability to strike down each sale if there is a legitimate health concern.
In a letter written to the CLCHPA’s authors, Dr. Paul B. Donzis, a professor of ophthalmology at UCLA, made clear that buying contacts from online sellers poses no danger. “Based on…authoritative scientific articles, it appears that online sales of contact lenses have not contributed to any increase in the incidence of contact lens related injury,” he said.
Moreover, the medical studies match the doctor’s rhetoric. A 20-year epidemiologic study conducted by Doctors Schein, Stapleton, and Keay, published in 2007 by the medical journal Eye & Contact Lens, found that there has not been any increase in microbial keratitis since the online contact industry sprouted up and began providing more and better affordable choices for consumers.
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https://fee.org/articles/horror-pirate-contacts-lenses/
No one is at risk from purchasing lenses from third-party contact lens vendors. Not surprisingly, optometrists and their favored lens manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson are using this news hook as a means of inciting fear. They are now stepping on the gas of their congressional lobbying efforts so that their bill, The Contact Lens Consumer Health Protection Act (CLCHPA), is passed into law.
The CLCHPA’s objective is to rid the country of the free market reforms brought about by The Fairness in Contact Lens Consumer Act (FCLCA), a 2003 bill that opened the contacts lens industry to free market competition for the first time.
...
Enraged, optometrist associations and contact lens vendors like Johnson & Johnson immediately began lobbying Congress to change the law. For the past decade, they have been claiming that these third-party vendors are jeopardizing the eye safety of millions of Americans. Specifically, they have expressed concern that these lenses pose a risk of developing keratitis, an eye infection affecting the cornea.
For these reasons, members of the medical lobby drafted the CLCHPA, a new bill that will greatly increase regulations in the contact lens industry, making it extremely difficult for third-party lens vendors to stay in business.
The bill is a solution in search of a problem. It will re-capture the contact lens industry and propel prices upwards, all while failing to increase safety even the slightest degree.
It is ridiculous that some doctors are correlating buying contact lenses from reputable third-party companies like Costco, Walmart, and 1-800 Contacts with purchasing them illegally from a Halloween street vendor.
For one, the lenses sold by third-party sellers are federally regulated. You still need a prescription to purchase contact lenses from online sellers (although numerous studies, as well as practices in other nations, have shown that even prescriptions are not necessary), and doctors still have the ability to strike down each sale if there is a legitimate health concern.
In a letter written to the CLCHPA’s authors, Dr. Paul B. Donzis, a professor of ophthalmology at UCLA, made clear that buying contacts from online sellers poses no danger. “Based on…authoritative scientific articles, it appears that online sales of contact lenses have not contributed to any increase in the incidence of contact lens related injury,” he said.
Moreover, the medical studies match the doctor’s rhetoric. A 20-year epidemiologic study conducted by Doctors Schein, Stapleton, and Keay, published in 2007 by the medical journal Eye & Contact Lens, found that there has not been any increase in microbial keratitis since the online contact industry sprouted up and began providing more and better affordable choices for consumers.
...
https://fee.org/articles/horror-pirate-contacts-lenses/