Poor vision? it is now instantly curable, cheap.
Laser eye surgery could solve it, cheaply. A $9.99 computer projector and a 15 cent laser pointer from alibaba[link], and great software could solve it easily. If the demand is actually there from some of the >1 billion nearsighted persons of 2020
AD then this is Instant vision correction for $11.00. Somebody, somewhere has a use for 11 billion dollars worth of medical device revenue. Maybe they'll build it.
You only need to use the machine once *. At the developing world they could loan it to their 110 closest friends to give everyone good vision at just a penny each.
This could be a safer version of laser eye surgery where you look at it once a day, 3 days in a row for gradual editing. That might beat the 20th century physician, one treatment all at once version. Home laser eye surgery could actually be safer.
And of course, for the frivolous or loving, it could identify what was a pet, calculate and use its database of the optimal eye shapes of pet animals and then the laser vision correction gives your pets better vision too.
------>Better be quick with the 11 billion dollar market. The competition is only 22 cents!
Laser or Terahertz (ThZ) vision correction to 20/10 in a pill.
The pill contains light or ThZ sensitive drugs** that effect the shape and thickness of the cornea, editing the cornea. You take the pill, and gaze at the vision editor, which could be in the form of a cutie doll for children to look at. The very low power, eye and pupil/retina safe lasers/ThZ emitters raster scan or project a custom pattern of drug activation shapes onto the eye surface. This could look sort of like halftone dots of drug activation, or even ~ french curves of light pattern.
Thz is airport scan machine frequency. It is able to see through tissues, is small enough for 100,000 DPI halftone dots of activated drug, and can turn on drugs in the cornea, like the laser, at full corneal depth.
I think there is almost no ambient Thz, so unlike being on light sensitizing drugs and walking around in the sun, being on Thz sensitizing drugs might be safer.
The Laser/ThZ emission activates the drug you took, and the individual little dots of drug activate at just their particular spot on the cornea. To thin the cornea, the system triggers apoptosis with apoptosis chemicals. Where the software decided to bulk up the cornea, keratinocyte growth factors cause corneal growth ***.
Because you just take one pill that delivers drug activity all week****, the change in your cornea is gradual and it can shrink or grow at a harmless (actually beneficial) rate. Gradual means you can say "good enough" midstream, and gradual contributes to higher quality of new tissue
So, you go online, get a doll, take a pill, and have perfect vision. You can change your mind midprocess. It might be able to get your vision all the way to 20/10, or even 20/5 vision. You are gently thrilled that the laser/Thz emitter that you look into is completely eye-safe.
The actual alibaba cost of a pill and doll that produce perfect vision is:
Optional 5 MP camera 20 cents
laser diode 1/2 cent
Battery 1/2 cent
Drug that edits corneas 1 cent (example: aspirin, retail, USA 7/10 of 1 cent each)
Projector 10 cents
So 32 cents for perfect vision.
If you are a halfbakery optimist and look to the future it gets cheaper and better. The 2028 compont cost is just 11 cents for perfect vision from a pill. (9 cent projector)
Also looking to 2028, medical science will have advanced to consider editing the rest of the eye besides the cornea. It is possible that you can use Thz to activate healing drugs and cell proliferation drugs through centimeters of tissue right at the retina to brighten dim vision, or merely restore the visual color saturation and contrast range at people in their 20s and older to be like that of children and pretteens.
*some drugs that cause apoptosis are peptides, and to cause them to localize at the eye they would be attached to Cell Penetrating peptides. These can be produced with a peptide sequencer for about $100 per gram or less. Insulin, a peptide is now bioavailable orally. 10 cents of peptide drug at $100/gram is 1 milligram of active drug. That sounds like very little orally, but with cell penetrating peptides could be sufficient.
The skeptic can always instill eyedrops, where 1 milligram of active drug growth factor peptide or RNA would be a really huge amount to put in an eyedropper bottle. If the eyedropper bottle is 1 cent on alibaba, and the drug is 100 times cheaper/more dilute at 1 cent, then drug cost is, rounded, just one cent!
*You can use the system once, but perhaps 2-3 times is better. 20th century physicians doing laser eye surgery had one office visit to get it done to make the most money. If you edit twice, with the system looking at your eye a week or month after the first use, you can base a second laser eye edit around the relaxed geometry of your healed eye so you can possibly improve your vision further to 20/10 or 20/5.
***[link] to some corneal growth factors
****One pill that lasts all week is "once a week Prozac".