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In Reply.
—I thank Drs Legler and Apple for their enlightening comments on the silicone IOL discoloration problem. Patience is a virtue, and eventually their laboratory will have a discolored IOL to examine. In the interim, I hope that this laboratory will develop a protocol for the scientific examination of these discolored IOLs, because a macroscopic examination will not suffice. Spectrographic, chemical, and other methods of examination will need to be employed.The biocompatibility studies that Drs Legler and Apple cite are all well and good, but in clinical practice these silicone IOLs are being implanted in human eyes, and, as we all are aware, certain materials do not always behave in a fashion expected of them; if they did, the need for human clinical trials would be unnecessary.My comments on the closed-loop IOLs were not meant to be completely analogous to the present situation, except to emphasize that