The Need for Independence

I’ve had glasses since I was nine years old. I moved to contacts when I was fourteen. I was young and dumb and twice left my contacts in for six months. If you sleep in your contacts, they are kind of cloudy when you wake up, so I would pull nose hairs to make my eyes tear up so I could see.

Now I’m shopping for Lasik. As part of the process, I am scheduling consultations with four of the eye surgeons in the DFW area. Luckily, it seems I have great options to choose from as three of the doctors won “Best Lasik Surgeon” (BLS) every year for the past four years according to a survey conducted by D-Magazine. Wait… What? All three doctors won BLS every year for the past four years? That doesn’t make any sense.

Could I call this post “The Need for Truth in Advertising”? Sure. It turns out that D-Magazine is an industry funded magazine that each surgeon probably gave money to in order to “win” the title of BLS. Given the hype around this “win” I feel it’s an attempt to manipulate potential patients.

But this also highlights the need for independence. Doctors should be independent of any award they claim to have “won”. Goldman Sach’s should be independent of government guarantees and bailouts… it just announced two consecutive quarters of record profits ($3.2B and $3.4B, respectively). Supreme Court Justices should be independent of the legislative and executive branches… the purpose of the court is to judge cases based on the Constitution, and not on any other terms.

I guess I’ll just get Lasik from whomever has the most awards…

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 6:57 am and is filed under Media, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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2 Responses to “The Need for Independence”

  1. Mark Says: July 16th, 2009 at 11:13 am

    If your theory is correct, then you should definitely go with the person who has the most awards. That means they had the most money to buy the most awards, thus are successful in their business.

  2. naomi Says: July 22nd, 2009 at 5:32 pm

    I had LASIK because I was a blind as as a bat, developed bad reactions to contacts, and glasses gave me migraines. I went to Hoopes in utah because of it’s reputation, price, and success rate and it was hands down the best thing I’ve ever done next to getting married.

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