From: Louis Newstrom (nnewstro@bellsouth.net)
Date: Fri Jul 06 2001 - 21:17:23 MDT
I do not call myself a cyborg, but in an interesting way, I am interested in the rights of people to become what some would call cyborgs.
I was born prematurely, and one of the side effects was elongated eyes, meaning that my lenses do not focus properly onto my retnas. My vision was on the order of 20-1000. I had to wear coke-bottle glasses for most of my life. Even with glasses, my vision was only correctable to about 20-60.
In 1996 I developed glaucoma AND cataracts. My eye doctor told me this with the interesting opening of "I have the best news you'll ever get". Turns out, plastic lenses could correct my vision to 20-20. However, this is NOT allowed by the American Medical Association. People are not allowed to get plastic lens implants for no other reason than to increase the vision they were born with. As soon as I had developed cataracts, then it was OK, because they were counteracting a disease.
Now I enjoy near 20-20 vision. I think that this should have been allowed even BEFORE I developed cateracts. But that begs the question, how far should we go? For example, my older brother was blessed with excellent eyesight, on the order of 20-15. I'll bet the world-record best eyesight is even better than that. It seems obvious that I should have been allowed to artificially increase my eyesight to 20-20, because that is "normal" for humans. Should I also be allowed to artificially increase my vision to 20-15 because that is "normal" for some people? This would actually be increasing my vision beyond what most people would consider "normal". Most people would consider that "cybernetic".
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