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Archive: May, 2007
May 27, 2007
AMO contact lens solution: When consumer recalls suck (more than usual)
So, on Friday (convenient, non?), AMO (Advanced Medical Optics, Inc.) announced a “Voluntary Recall of Complete(R) MoisturePlus(TM) Multipurpose Solution” because, long story short, people using this contact lens solution are at a seven times greater risk to contract an Acanthamoeba eye infection (which can lead to this). Why do I care? Well, not only because this is the contact lens solution that Heather and I use, but I just went out last week and bought a new supply, now proudly pictured below:
So, now I have to throw out the solution, our contact lenses and lens cases. Especially problematic is the recall information is distinctly Amero-centric. The recall press release information offers no info for Canadian consumers. There is no Canadian AMO website (just contact information). When I called the 888 number (1-888-899-9183) associated with the recall to get a return kit, I could only leave an US address. I tried leaving my Canadian info, exchanging province for state and postal code for zip. We’ll see if I get anything in the mail. There is an 866 number (1-866-863-3873) on the Canadian packaging, but as I tried it this morning, I got a busy signal. I tried calling it this afternoon and no one answered (again, the bottle suggest hours are 8:30-4:30 EST).
Uh, when will companies clue in that in situations like these they need to have (and no puns are intended here) clear instructions (i.e. Canadians call this number) & transparent policies (i.e. we will refund what you spent on solution) when they’re in the position of a recall?
Update (5-31-07): Based on the information I got at the phone number Mike (thanks) provided below, Heather and I brought all the bottles to the local Shopper’s Drug Mart. Because we didn’t have receipts, we exchanged our bottles for store credit, which we used to buy new solution. Heather, after speaking with her Optometrist, suggested we get Opti-free Express as a replacement (YMMV). And that’s where we stand with that.
May 18, 2007
Drinks!
May 16, 2007
Fruit Flies versus Lobsters
I came across two blog postings today, one that seems to normalize our attitudes toward one animal and another that messes things up.
The first is that lobsters, apparently, don’t feel pain. Well, not pain in the way we’re supposed to think of pain, at least. This, unspoken, suggests that boiling lobsters, for example, is OK because they don’t feel pain. This brings to mind the problem with framing rights along lines of pain. The caveat in these discussions are that lobsters (and arthropods, by extension) do not feel pain like we feel pain. Pain is a human construct. So, in that they do not sense the same thing that we do (because for us, there is emotional component to pain) others (or ignores) the fact that these organism react to stimuli such as, in the case of a lobster, boiling water.
The second was a paper published titled Order in Spontaneous Behavior. It outlines a research project that comes to the conclusion that free-will and spontaneity exist in Fruit Flies (genus Drosophila). Rather than operating “as robots” in “reaction to external stimuli,” it would appear that fruit flies’ different reactions to the same stimulus cannot be explained as a random event. This suggests that there is something else going on in the brain, and that may be a biological origin to what we would call free will.
So what would I suggest we make out of this? Life and living is intrinsically more complicated than we would necessarily believe. If there is the possibility that Fruit Flies exhibit some form of free will, that impacts how I conceptualized what a Fruit Fly was capable of. I would say that it makes more sense believing that non-humans are capable of much more than we currently are able to know and that, that has implications for how I interact with other organisms.
The caution in the Fruit Fly research is this idea of free will and extending it out toward non-humans. As I quickly outline in the case of the Lobster, applying a human construct on another organism to “test” how we should act toward them may lead to a slippery slope where only organisms that are close to humans (and perceive the world like we do) deserve some kind of consideration. I’m not necessarily comfortable with that notion.
May 15, 2007
In the news: “Biotechnology Has Solved The Debate Over The Origin Of The European Potato”
Boils down (no pun intended) to this: blame the Chileans.
All I can say at a moment like this is THANK GOD for biotechnology.
Last sighting
