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To the Editor:
—At a time when all medicine, including ophthalmology, is emphasizing preventive practices, it is paradoxical that ophthalmologists be encouraged to not only tacitly approve but actively engage in a practice which can actually destroy the vision of a previously sound eye. Since I have waited in vain to read a condemnation of contact lenses as a replacement of spectacles for purely cosmetic reasons, I assume my objections are unique. Nevertheless, a dissent from the rising chorus of enthusiasm appears long overdue.Accurate statistics relative to the potential dangers of wearing contact lenses have been few. A recent paper by Cassady (Corneal Contact Lenses, Arch. Ophthal. 66:3, 1961) gives an incidence of corneal injury of 6%. Fortunately the injuries were almost all trifling, only 2 patients developing permanent corneal scarring and neither of these having visual reduction. But it must be emphasized that it is only luck which