By Megan McKeever

“I cannot even see the eye chart,” claims freshman Brianna Burke. “It just blends into the background.”

Burke, like many other college students, suffers from nearsightedness, or as optometrists call it myopia. Those with myopia are unable to see distant objects clearly without the aid of glasses or contact lenses.

“When my contacts come off, I literally cannot see my hands,” adds sophomore Meaghan Davidson. She depends on her distance lenses to get her through the day.

While both Burke and Davidson have distance prescriptions, as patients generally have, the International Myopia Prevention Association finds this to be the wrong kind of treatment. The association’s Web site, myopia.org, is full of pages and shortcuts dedicated toward uncovering the truth about the cause of myopia and its correct treatments, claiming that eye doctors are in on a conspiracy to make money. For years optometrists have stated that is carried through genetics and that prescriptions will help.

“There are rare cases of congenital myopia, but that is a birth defect. Most kids ‘acquire’ myopia when they start reading,” claims Donald Rehm, the president of the International Myopia Prevention Association. “Almost without exception, all the students you see wearing glasses for myopia have been made into visual cripples by their eye doctors.”

Rehm started researching the subject back when he was a college student at Penn State and “became myopic.” This past September, Rehm and the association unsuccessfully petitioned the FDA to “issue written warnings to parents [saying] that distance glasses worsen myopia in children” and that “prescribed reading glasses for prolonged close work may reduce myopia.”

According to Dr. Marc Werner, optometrist at the Eye Clinic in Garden City, NY, the association’s arguments have no basis. “There’s no good proof of that,” he states. “A nearsighted person is sighted to see up close. Taking the distance glasses off to read is not a bad idea, but you don’t need reading glasses until you’re like 43 or 44 years old, on average.”

In response to Dr. Werner’s claims, Rehm instructs students to do some researching of their own. “If you want to see the opposite reasoning from a doctor, go to www.covd.org and click on myopia,” he says. “They make it clear that prolonged reading is the cause of myopia, although they are too timid to take the next step and say that minus lenses make it worse and plus lenses are preventive.”

Dr. Werner offers a simple explanation for those who have to repeatedly strengthen their prescriptions, which goes against Rehm’s belief that nearsighted lenses only add to the problem. “It’s like if someone were to say to you that you should have never gotten shoes 10 years ago, because you got shoes and now you’re a bigger size,” he says. “You don’t ever say wearing shoes is what caused your feet to grow, and it’s the same thing with eye glasses.”

Dr. Werner also makes it a point to attack the Web site’s other claim about vision deterioration. “Nothing you can do visually or optically can damage you eyes,” he states. “The worst that can happen is that you might have a headache, but if you’re not having headaches and you’re seeing fine, then you cannot do any damage.”

This is good news for the average college student on the computer several hours a day. Dr. Werner concluded that next time you hear a comment about straining your eyes- “you can read standing on your head in the dark, if you can read fine.”