Jewish Invention Myths: Laser Eye Surgery/LASIK
Yet another ‘jewish invention’ claim is the idea that jews invented the laser eye surgery (or LASIK) which is so ubiquitous across the Western world today in order to allow those with imperfect vision to correct their vision so that they no longer have to wear contact lenses or glasses to allow for clear vision.
Pam Karp for example claims that the jewish ‘inventor of LASIK eye surgery’ was Samuel Blum. (1)
This is untrue since the idea behind corrective eye surgery for eyesight was actually the Spanish ophthalmologist Jose Barraquer – sometimes known as the ‘Father of modern Refractive Surgery’ - (2) who pioneered and documented the technique in the 1950s and then publicised it in 1962 and it was picked up by American ophthalmologists in the 1970s. (3)
In 1980 Samuel Blum, Rangaswamy Srinivasan and James Wynne – not just Samuel Blum as Karp claims – discovered that an ultraviolet excimer laser could be used to modify living tissue without burning and damaging the surrounding area (4) and went on to successfully patent an ultraviolet excimer laser in the US between 1986 and 1988 as US4784135. (5)
The problem is that Blum, Srinivasan and Wynne’s work had nothing to do with laser eye surgery they just realized that a particular type of laser could be used for surgery of any kind without the problems normally associated with lasers making contact with living tissue.
The person who created laser eye surgery – building on Barraquer’s work from the 1950s and 1960s – was the Iranian ophthalmologist Gholam Peyman (sometimes known as the ‘Inventor of LASIK’) in 1988 which he successfully patented as US4840175. (6)
So no jews didn’t invent laser eye surgery/LASIK: Jose Barraquer and Gholam Peyman did!
References
(1) https://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Inventors/12388
(2) https://isrs.online/profile/jose-i-barraquer/
(3) R. Troutman, C. Swinger, 1970, ‘Refractive keratoplasty: keratophakia and keratomileusis’, Transactions of the American Ophthalmological Society, Vol. 76, pp. 329-330
(4) https://web.archive.org/web/20230205044704/https://laserfest.org/lasers/pioneers/wynne.cfm
(5) https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=4784135&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP
(6) https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/026845594/publication/US4840175A?q=pn%3DUS4840175