THE advent of jewellery designed to be embedded in the eyeball adds new meaning to the phrase “a sparkle in your eye”. It also exposes a regulatory blind spot.
Doctors at the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery have implanted star and heart-shaped platinum jewels in the eyes of seven people. The millimetre-sized specks of metal, called JewelEye, are embedded in the membrane that protects the surface of the eye. The procedure takes around 15 minutes.
The operations went ahead without any safety trials. Gerrit Melles, the ophthalmologist who pioneered the procedure, is confident that none was necessary. Platinum clips…
