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Biotech Science

Permormance-Enhancing Contact Lenses 102

Posted by timothy from the hola-gargoyle dept.
coastal984 writes "With all the allegations, criticisms, congressional hearings, and suspensions concerning performance-enchancing steroids and supplements in sports, namely Major League Baseball, Nike has now introduced performance-enhancing contact lenses. These new lenses, which give players wearing them a scary orange/amber tint to their eyes, block out useless blue tones and make colors such as red (i.e. the seams on a baseball, vital to batters) easier to see. They also block out sun rays and help ease shadows, as well as improve overall vision. There are also versions for golfers and other sports, and soon to be versions for night contests as well."
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Permormance-Enhancing Contact Lenses More

Permormance-Enhancing Contact Lenses

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  • Mini Blu-Blockers! (Score:5, Funny)

    by zulux ( 112259 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:12AM (#12416819) Homepage Journal


    Only 19.95 + 7.99 S&H from NIKE!!!!

    Order now, and we'll throw in these set of knives!

    Operators are standing by! Order now!

    1-888-BLU-BLOK.

  • Permormance-Enhancing Contact Lenses ?

    And I thought it was just the underwear...

  • The slashdot editors (Score:4, Funny)

    by coljac ( 154587 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:20AM (#12416881) Homepage
    Could use some enhancement of their proofreading "permormance".
    • Interesting, but I don't really get the idea of permormance-enhancement, even after reading the article.
      And can someone explain how block[ing] out sun rays would improve my vision? I usually find that doing so makes the world just appear a little darker.
      • Yea, sorry about the typo, ran the post through spell check to make sure it was ok (though I still missed one other, "enhancing", didn't think to check the title... Any way an admin could fix that title for me so I don't look like a total idiot?

        As for why blocking out sun rays, this is more of a health issue than anything else. If you read the article, it states how many players who are constantly exposed directly to the sunlight sustain damage to their eyes and cause several various conditions.

        • Any way an admin could fix that title for me so I don't look like a total idiot?

          Don't be stupid! They don't bother to read/correct the text the first time round, they're not gonna make an effort to do it later on.

      • And can someone explain how block[ing] out sun rays would improve my vision? I usually find that doing so makes the world just appear a little darker.

        Seems pretty obvious to me:

        block out useless blue tones and make colors such as red ... easier to see.
    • It wasn't a typo. They had to spell it like that to get it through the spam filters.
    • Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI

      Having seen bpth "Parts - The Clonus Horror" and "Plan Nine From Outer Space", I tend to agree.

  • prescription? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the_greywolf ( 311406 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:30AM (#12416944) Homepage
    i'd be interested in these if they're available for prescription focal adjustments.

    i'm almost blind in my right eye due to near-sightedness, and don't wear glasses, but i'd wear these contacts if i can get them for correcting my own vision.

    • Re:prescription? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wibs ( 696528 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:00AM (#12417118)
      excuse me for my ignorance... why would these sports-tweaked contacts be more useful than normal contacts for you?

      • Re:prescription? (Score:3, Informative)

        by technos ( 73414 )
        Contacts don't mix well with baseball. Too much dust and dirt, too many quick eye movements, (the lens lags on your eye for a fraction of a second) and what do you do when your lens just came free in the outfield?

        That said, most companies have a pricy disposable sport lens on the market.
        • Actually, contacts apparently mix quite well with baseball. Or professional baseball, anyways. Many players wear contact lenses to enhance their vision to "better" than normal (i.e. 20/15). Of course, if the dust bothers you, you can just opt for LASIK. Slate [slate.com] had an excellent article on this a couple weeks back that posed some interesting questions about what, exactly, is "cheating" in sports. Good read. I thought it was much better than the story posted on Slashdot, actually.
        • Contacts don't mix well with baseball. Too much dust and dirt, too many quick eye movements, (the lens lags on your eye for a fraction of a second) and what do you do when your lens just came free in the outfield?

          I don't know how long it is since you've used contacts, if at all, but I spent about ten years playing soccer, cricket, volleyball, tennis and squash - all of which are games at least as fast-paced, if not more so, than baseball - with contact lenses and I can't say I've ever noticed any "lagging

          • Wore em for a few years, off for a few years, wearing them now. Actually, currently wearing glasses, as my contacts are on order. (I'm a dummy) :/

            I was just repeating what an optometrist told me when I first wore them ten years ago.

      • Re:prescription? (Score:5, Informative)

        by coastal984 ( 847795 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:58AM (#12417423) Journal
        Speaking from experience (yes, a slashdot reader that is also a sports buff and athlete), day games can be VERY tough. Picking up the seams of a baseball in motion is vital to determining where it's going to end up when it reaches you - it's the rotation of the ball causing the seams to catch the air and make it curve, drop, and go in other directions.

        Further, baseball diamonds are traditionally placed with the plate facing out towards between the north and east - in northern directions, the pitcher is fine, but if the plate is facing out towards the east, the setting sun to the west is right in the pitchers face - and pitchers are not allowed to wear sunglasses.

        Finally, another challenge is picking up balls in changing lights (i.e. coming out of a shadow) or when its high in a bright daytime sky (thus blocking out blue-tones). When the ball is leaving a pitchers hand in excess of 90 miles per hour and coming off the bat twice as fast or more, every little bit helps...

        When they come out with the night game lens, they will help players from losing the ball when its up in the lights, or when it blends in with the crowd, and other instances where the speeding ball is difficult to pick up.

    • Forgive me for asking this, but if your eyesight is that bad, why don't you just get over your aversion to glasses?

  • Lasik is being used as well (Score:5, Informative)

    by venomkid ( 624425 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:32AM (#12416961)
    Apparently golf pros (Tiger Woods being one) are having their eyes recalibrated to 20/10 and better using Lasik. Some are attributing Woods' latest successes to it. Heard it on NPR.

    Personally, I can't wait for the cyborgs.
    • That was a Slate piece by William Saletan [msn.com] on eyesight-improving contacts and surgery.

      The new Nike lenses were the obvious next step, I suppose, not just making your eyes better overall but actively separating useful from useless information in the incoming light.
    • Someone is going to have to explain to me why you
      need 20-10 vision to see a stationary golf ball
      less than 6 ft away.
      They certainly don't need to see where it lands,
      caddies, marshalls, fans, etc can do that.
    • Vision around and beyond 20/20 isn't always possible w/ lasik or anything else for that matter.

      THere is a notion of maximum correctible vision. When I had my lasik done I ended up at 20/20 and 20/15. The doctor explained to me that it becomes less a problem of focusing the light than one of your brain processing the imagery. Each person has a different threshhold that their brain can process and I believe it is fairly rare for it to be much beyond 20/20, 20/15.

      • This is true.. anything beyond 20/20 has to do with the brian reciving the information... test the general reflexes of a person with 20/20 and that of a person with 20/10 vision... you'll see that being able to just see the letters on the eye chart isn't enough....FYI... next time your given an ey exam.. notice that the optomitrist is counting while you read top to bottom starting with the big E...
    • Weird, Tiger Woods does advertisements for a local Lasik center here on KFI (640AM) in southern california. (and for the flames coming -- I only listen to john and ken, not that conservative bullshit -- dr laura, rush, Im looking at you)

  • useless blue tones (Score:5, Funny)

    by ZSpade ( 812879 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:46AM (#12417038) Homepage
    block out useless blue tones

    And at once a thousand tiny hi-piched screams sounded through the night, and no one ever saw a smurf, ever again.

  • What's wrong with making ourselves better anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheNarrator ( 200498 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:49AM (#12417057)
    If there are no negative health effects, then what's the big deal? I can't understand why making ourselves better in these kinds of ways is in any way bad. . This anti-human-improvement sentiment that goes around whenever anything like this is announced reminds me of Vonnegut's Story [geocities.com] about 2081 where everyone is finally equal.

    IMHO, I see it as a deeper cultural trend that originally started with Frankenstein. With every technological improvement, especially if it is augmenting human capability people are expecting some sort of Daedalus [wikipedia.org] ironic ending. It's in a lot of sci-fi movies. Think Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, Terminator, The Matrix.
    • I agree wholeheartly. Another line of reasoning to support these views is exactly what does performance enhancing mean? Where is the line drawn? Would performance enhancing substances be legal if there where not side effects? I think they already are.

      For example, "sports drinks" like gatorade can help an athlete, and give them an edge. Sucking down a bottle of oxygen can improve endurance. Maybe sports should ban O2? All sports should go completely natural. Athletes can only eat farm fresh organi
    • I see it as a deeper cultural trend that originally started with Frankenstein.
      It started way before, and probably always existed. Daedalus you're citing is a good example, Pythagoreans killing Hippasus [wikipedia.org] another.

    • Re:What's wrong with making ourselves better anywa (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @03:41AM (#12417597)
      If there are no negative health effects, then what's the big deal?
      I can't understand why making ourselves better in these kinds of ways is in any way bad.

      Its fine in real life. But in sports, you have to make a decision - do you want to see competition based on the hard work of the athlete or the hard work of his doctors and technicians? If you want to see the later, then no problem.

      If you want to see human atheletic competition than artifical body modifications - chemical, mechanical or otherwise, need to be kept out and a clear and up to date definition needs to accompany that ban.
      • do you want to see competition based on the hard work of the athlete or the hard work of his doctors and technicians?

        if everyone is using performance enhancing contacts/gatorade/drugs then the edge they provide is negated. it's all relative, and whatever personal motivation or smarts an athlete has will be the deciding factor. I'd use examples of athletically gifted people who failed to compare to more experienced but lesser talented atheletes, but they'd probably be lost on the slashdot crowd and we can
        • It would depend on what was being decided. The rules are often linked to the tools, which implicitly includes peoples bodies. Change the bodies you have changed the rules.

          So which rules can you change and still be playing the same game played 100 years ago?

          It doesnt even touch on the fact that not everyone is going to want or be able to benefit from the same advancements.
        • People will alter there brain chemistry with drugs to make them more motivated or feel more confidant. And everybody ends up the same...
        • my point is that if everyone is enhanced then the enhancements cease to be deciding factors.

          That is only true if everyone has equal access to all available enhancements.

          Which will never happen.

          So it really comes down to who has the most money and the best business accumen.
        • One problem I see with all-enhancements-allowed competition is that some enhancements, like e.g. steroids, are very effective and also very bad for the athletes's health -- this means that professional sports will then be dominated by people willing to or coerced into sacrificing their health.

          I, for example, don't care about the usual spectator sports, and I am only mildly interested in watching sports that I do myself. If those sports were dominated by drug-enhanced cyborgs, it would be pointless for me

          • first off, i just want to get it out there that i'm not in favor of steroids in sports. that said...

            some enhancements, like e.g. steroids, are very effective and also very bad for the athletes's health

            granted it's hard to know the long-term effects of any drug, regardless of how well tested, but I'm willing to bet that Barry Bonds will have access to considerably higher quality steroids than what you can buy on the street. Add that to the professional staff of doctors keeping an eye on him, and I'd vent
        • I've heard before that part of the concern with stuff like this is that it makes it harder to compare todays players with those from decades past. They make a point of trying to keep baseball construction as consistant as they can so that todays players will be hitting a ball that reacts as much as possible like the ball that Babe Ruth was hitting.

          Now, I'm all for performance enhancements of all types as long as its disclosed, but I don't see any problem with also banning enhancements from certain sports

      • Re:What's wrong with making ourselves better anywa (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @08:34AM (#12418797) Homepage Journal
        How is this anything other than an improved version of sunglasses? It's not like these lenses link into a laser-calibrated swing mechanism that helps the guy hit better. Personally, I think this is a great step forward.

        Thinking back to when I played, I wonder if it helps outfielders pick up fly balls better - even with sunglasses, sometimes the glare of the sun can make a ball uncatchable.
      • But in sports, you have to make a decision - do you want to see competition based on the hard work of the athlete or the hard work of his doctors and technicians?

        It should never be wrong to artificially bring an athelete to a level of ability that others exist at naturally.

        At the very least, there should be an all-drug\modification olympics to see just what people are capable of.

        And once in a while, I'd love to see competitions where engineering skill and medical ability were secondary to natural abilit

      • Artifical is the new natural (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Julian Morrison ( 5575 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @10:05AM (#12419620)
        We are a species that, naked, dies from cold or sun. Our clothes are our skin. So are contact lenses our eyes, and cars our feet?

        If anything this and similar are gradually working to deconstruct the idea of the natural born human as a standalone unit. Rather, all humans are necessarily "cyborgs". Creating and integrating with tools to extend the self is the true species specialty.
      • The activity that most closely resembles a contest of "hard work" is conventional massive multiplayer online gaming. The highest ratings go to those who carry out the most repetitions.

        If you do not want to see a competition based on the athlete's innate biological ability plus his or her hard work plus the hard work of his or her doctors and technicians, I think you will need to publish a Standard Athlete specification analogous to Formula One racing [wikipedia.org].

    • Take it out to the max and you should see the problem (assuming you're reasonable). They just started a DARPA program to make vastly better legs and arms. From what I know of current technology, it is very possible that in 10 years, an amputee will be able to have a neurally controlled limb attached with strength and speed characteristics well beyond those of any modern athlete. So, should we allow all of those athletes who have their legs and arms replaced with "bionic" limbs to compete on an equal basi

  • Performance enhancing? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:57AM (#12417100)
    Hardly. This is not really a newsworthy piece - if sunglasses with the same tints, etc, have the same effect, you can hardly call contact lens' that do the same revolutionary in any sense.
    • More importantly is whether or not anybody can go get these.

      Maybe if it were something that only more well to-do people could get I could get all uppity.
      • Not everyone an afford them, since they'll be about the same price as regular contact lenses and not everyone can afford them. (That's what I get for reading.)
        • "Not everyone an afford them, since they'll be about the same price as regular contact lenses and not everyone can afford them. (That's what I get for reading.)"

          There are people that can afford green fees at golf clubs that cannot afford contacts?
          • Why not?
            Some golf courses are extremely cheap.
            Some people may be able to afford one or the other, but not both.
            If your friend works at the course you might be able to play for free.

            Plus, there are plenty of people that can't afford either green fees or any contact lenses.

  • slashdot... news for... (Score:5, Funny)

    by killa62 ( 828317 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:26AM (#12417269)
    NERDS. stuff that MATTERS!
    Sports? bah...

  • Nothing So New (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jfb3 ( 25523 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @02:42AM (#12417355)
    These appear to be the same as the shooting lenses, skiing goggles, driving glasses we've had around for years, just in contact form.
    • I don't think they will do everything that skiing goggles will, seeing as I have skied down the hill with my plain old contacts in(and no goggles) and not had my plain old contacts in anymore when I reached the bottom of the hill.

  • safety glasses (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cahiha ( 873942 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @03:12AM (#12417469)
    In most sports, you should be wearing safety glasses anyway, and whatever fashionable tints you want incorporate, you can incorporate there.

    I suspect people put this tint into contact lenses because you probably look kind of stupid wearing pink safety glasses.

  • Oooh.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Klowner ( 145731 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @03:26AM (#12417531) Homepage
    I just recently discovered I do, in fact, HAVE a permormance, and I am also very interested in enhancing it.
  • Seems to me to be a fairly odd thing , I mean they dissallow steroid and other treatments , So why should a lense that allows you to more easily compete be allowed.

    • Nope. (Score:2)

      by QMO ( 836285 )
      Steroids, etc. are permanent and dangerous.

      Contact lenses are like gloves to give you a better grip, or baseball cap to keep the sun out of your eyes, or shoes with cleats to get a better grip in the dirt and grass. When you're done, you take off the contacts and have no after effects at all.

      • Re:Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by FidelCatsro ( 861135 )
        Steriods are not always dangerous though , only if abused .
        It is quite possible to take steriod treatments to improve your health and boost your fittness ,safely .

        Multiple diffrent steroid treatments are used to aid many many phyisical injuries or diseases. So they are not always dangerous even if someone at the peak of their physical prowess takes them in safe doses they could improve abilitys slightly without negative effects on the health .

        But i see your point , as most people taking anabolic steriod
    • Seems to me to be a fairly odd thing , I mean they dissallow steroid and other treatments , So why should a lense that allows you to more easily compete be allowed.

      Because these are effectively sunglasses. Certain tints of colours improve your vision under certain situations by reducing the amount of blue light you see.

      These things are so far removed from being anything near 'cheating' it's not funny.
      • Cheating .. well would you be ok if they then allowed the pitcher to have a mechanical aid to fire off the shot . or perhaps a laser sight or targeter attached to their sun-glasses ? perhaps a small computer to relay diagnostic information as to the wind speed and direction and give them a rough ideal tragectory. using an optical device to filter out light so you can better see the ball is still an artifical aid , no matter how ingenious .

        Im not the biggest sports fan ever , but from freinds of mine who ar

        • perhaps a small computer to relay diagnostic information as to the wind speed and direction and give them a rough ideal tragectory. using an optical device to filter out light so you can better see the ball is still an artifical aid , no matter how ingenious .

          Does baseball currently allow players to wear sunglasses and call it a legitimate thing? The answer is yes they do allow sunglasses.

          For $20 CDN I can buy a pair of sunglasses which have this same yellow/amber tint which changes the amount of blue

    • So you're saying we should have to play sports naked? That sounds like the only way to remove performance "enhancements". (Must. resist. joke.)

  • Performance enhancing contacts? (Score:3, Informative)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @08:16AM (#12418675) Homepage
    That might be a bit of a stretch. I have worn sunglasses with the same lens tinting for a few years now. They really do make a nice difference because blue light is so harsh.

    But other than taking the optical properties of a relatively inexpensive pair of sunglasses, this isn't what I would call 'performance enhancing contacts'.

    I was expecting a HUD or something cool like that, not a description of what I already wear for cycling.
  • ugh couldn't find the original article thing on popsci.com but here's what i found thru google http://www.core77.com/challenge/humanpower/pages/8 desc.htm [core77.com] i think it's just a concept but i wonder if the night version Coming Soon(tm) from nike is like this?

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