So you’ve always wanted blue eyes, huh? Well, California-based company Stroma Medical Corporation has invented a laser procedure that may actually replace your colored contact lenses and give you blue eyes—for life!
Here's something we didn't know: We all have blue eyes, according to the brand’s website. But the reason why we end up with brown eyes is that there’s a thin layer of brown pigment that covers the front surface of the iris (which is the colored part of the eye). What the laser procedure does is it “disrupts this layer of pigment” causing the body to start a “natural and gradual tissue-removal” process. The result? Blue eyes.
The procedure doesn’t involve major surgery—yep, no needles or incisions. The technician will just give you topical anesthetic before starting the 20-second procedure. Bilis lang, ‘di ba?
You don’t automatically get blue eyes right after the treatment, though. According to the website, your irises will get darker (like, they’ll probably turn gray) during the first week. And then they’ll become lighter, until they turn blue.
Here’s the thing: The procedure isn’t available in the Philippines, and the company is still carrying out clinical trials all over the world. It's looking into conducting experiments in the Philippines, Costa Rica, Mexico, London, Paris, Toronto, and Argentina.
If they do pick you to undergo the trial, the researchers will only perform the procedure on ONE of your eyes—that way, they can see if the treatment really works. Oh, and you'd have to wait for over a year to get the other eye treated. As stated in Stroma's FAQs, "If a clinical patient has a reaction, we need some way to determine whether that reaction is due to our procedure or some other factor, and the best way to do so is to keep one eye untreated throughout the follow-up period. At the end of the follow-up period, we hope to be able to treat the other eye free of charge, provided that the patient has had no adverse reaction in the treated eye and that our commitment to treat the other eye does not violate any applicable laws governing clinical patient compensation."
Um, blue eyes are awesome and all, but we don't think we're volunteering any time soon. Would you? Let us know by commenting below!
With additional text by Sandra Evarkalainen