EDITORIAL

The visionary fictions of a myopic like Borges and the need to imagine hypotheses and their metamorphosis into evidence.
Rodrigo M. Torres

OCE Director

Oftalmol Clin Exp (ISSNe 1851-2658)
2024; 17(2): e155-e156.

If I were to tell you that there are a large number of slit lamps equipped with a sophisticated system that covertly records each person we evaluate, processing a vast amount of data through a non-human intelligence, which not only assesses ocular abnormalities but also determines overall health and life expectancy, you would likely say I am exaggerating. If I were to further add that the company manufacturing these devices auctions off this data in an illegal market of medical insurance companies, you might suspect that the author of this editorial is not me, but rather a character from a story written “against the clock” by the creator and storyteller Hernán Casciari, who in turn was invaded by ghostly neurotransmitters of incinerated ideas, those notes that Borges asked to be burned before his death on June 14, 1986. The energy that emerged after his death was part of the epic that led the soccer team to win the matches that came days later, culminating in Maradona’s consecration in the final won on June 29 of that same year in Mexico. Yes, Borges’ energy helped win the 1986 World Cup, and I only realized it recently. But this vision I had has nothing to do with everything in this issue of OCE and what lies ahead in our future. Or does it? Because many of us are imagining and working for the great present and future of our journal as a scientific publication in the field of vision sciences for Hispanic America and the world.
Playing with fiction in this editorial is a practical exercise. It speaks to the relevance of thinking about doing impossible things and then making them a reality. Realities and fictions, like imagining the existence of a company that scans your iris and thereby controls international person identification, and also owns a virtual monetary system, though this, which seems like a tale, is now reality. What I don’t know if it’s true is the rumor that this company was sabotaged by rebellious ophthalmologists because they argued that iris evaluation is a medical act. Therefore, they decided to carve the iris of all people with a laser, causing a worldwide chaos of identities. We also don’t know how true it may be that the company that developed the iris scanning system fired its head of personnel for not foreseeing the need to include ophthalmologists in its development team who might have prevented this problem that ultimately led to the company’s bankruptcy. Because sometimes reality surpasses fiction.
We are in a post-pandemic present where uncertainty is reality, where all wars feel close but still distant, and where there are increasingly more things that were once fiction and are now reality, such as the fact that there is much more to treating myopia than just lenses or excimer laser. Science progresses as much as our minds allow it to. Today, with clear scientific evidence, we understand that refractive errors are exclusively a medical concern. Because for those children who have myopia and could be our future Borges, we now have methods that can control its progression to prevent complications that could lead to blindness, such as glaucoma or retinal alterations associated with myopia.
This issue of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology —appearing during the month when June 14 is established for the first time as National Myopia Day in Argentina, in commemoration of the death of Jorge Luis Borges— contains information to determine the level of evidence and facilitate correct decision-making, new hypotheses on the “eye - gut - brain - lung” axis, and the leaky ocular surface syndrome. It also offers a comprehensive review of the impact of Borges’ visual problems on his literary work, which in turn describes complications secondary to myopia. The original articles in this issue reveal data from studies in our region, but with global impact, as well as clinical cases and surgeries demonstrating that originality can arise even in potentially common events. It is up to you, the physicians, to detect the peculiar in the frequent. Cases and scientific matters that are real but have required their authors to see beyond to solve their patients’ problems, using the scientific method in a context where not only medicine but also life is practiced based on evidence, properly prioritizing our sources of information. I would like to continue sharing what we have planned for publication in the next issue of OCE, but let’s enjoy the present, which is the most real and tangible thing we can grasp today.