OPINION: Window to death?
Jan. 29—Would you like to know when you are going to die?
Ask your eye doctor.
Here's why: Scientists in China, Australia and Germany are working on a simple eye test that may provide doctors with a clue into how long you have left to live. The international team has discovered a link between the biological age of a person's retinas and their risk of death.
According to these scientists, the membrane at the back of the eye contains light sensitive cells that begin deteriorating during middle age. A study of almost 47,000 adults found that people whose retinas were "older" than their actual age were more likely to die over the next decade.
This is certainly a cup half full, cup half empty thing.
The scientific community claims this discovery could lead to a routine screening tool for a host of life-threatening illnesses — including Alzheimer's disease.
Reports on this potential breakthrough state biological aging is unique to the individual and may be a better indicator of current and future health. Study authors used an advanced type of AI (artificial intelligence) known as "deep learning" to accurately predict a person's retinal age from images of the fundus.
Fundus?
Yes ... fundus. I'll let you Google it.
The new technology is different from similar tissue, cell, and chemical tests of biological aging that the study authors say are fraught with ethical and privacy issues. These tests are also invasive, expensive, and time consuming.
The team validated their screening model using some 19,200 fundus images from the right eyes of 11,052 participants in relatively good health. This showed a strong association between predicted retinal age and real age, with an overall accuracy to within 3.5 years.
The whole thing reminds me of the 2008 series titled "Fringe," with John Noble, the supposed brilliant/mad scientist and once institutionalized Walter Bishop; Joshua Jackson (formerly Pacey on "Dawson's Creek"), who plays Noble's incredibly smart — like 190 IQ smart — and jack of all trades son, Peter Bishop; Anna Torv, the vivacious FBI Agent Olivia Dunham; Lance Reddick, the sketchy Homeland Security guy, Phillip Broyles; and even an appearance by Leonard Nimoy as Dr. William Bell.
Are you familiar with it? If you're not already hooked on "1883" or catching up on "Yellowstone" or "Bridgerton," then you should watch the five-season TV series. You can catch it on HBO Max.
Anyway, why this eye versus death day study reminded me of "Fringe" is because the brilliant/mad scientist Walter Bishop seems to need and get a new, crazy gizmo for everything he does — including a scene where he extracts the eyeball of a deceased woman and uses some kind of odd equipment to capture the final image her eye saw before death.
Somehow, it works. After all, it's Hollywood, right?
But the current study by this international group of scientists seems as if it could produce an equally interesting result as Walter Bishop's odd equipment did.
All of which begs the question: Would you want to know when you might be scheduled to leave the community of the living? KLOVE radio recently posed that question, and nearly every single person gave an emphatic NO.
I'm not sure. If I knew I had limited time, I would be able to do two important things — get my house in order for those I leave behind and do the things I've always wanted to, like visit friends and family, ride a horse again and go to Australia.
But on the other hand, I'm not sure I'd want all the stress associated with knowing how much time is left on my life's stopwatch. Plus, these scientists say they can pinpoint when, but with the caveat of it being within 3.5 years — so would it be 3.5 more or less?
I don't need that kind of unknown factored in.
W. Curt Vincent can be reached at 910-506-3023 or cvincent@laurinburgexchange.com.
