New Tinted Glasses Draw Caution
The government cautioned consumers Tuesday not to expect a new type of tinted glasses produced by a Tustin manufacturer to cure colorblindness, but the company says it can help a lot.
ColorMax Technologies Inc. won Food and Drug Administration approval earlier this month to sell tinted prescription eyeglasses to aid people who cannot properly distinguish shades of red or green from other colors.
The company’s stock price has more than doubled since the Dec. 6 announcement, but its shares fell $1.25, to $12.75, in over-the-counter trading Tuesday. ColorMax executives said Monday that the company’s board and shareholders had approved a 2-for-1 stock split for early next year.
In issuing the caution, the FDA cited concern that heavy publicity surrounding ColorMax could be misleading.
The ColorMax “color vision enhancement lenses” can help patients distinguish between colors, FDA vision scientist Bruce Drum said. By filtering certain wavelengths of light entering the eye, they affect the brightness of different shades of reds and greens by making them lighter or darker, he said.
But they do not allow patients to see colors they could not see before, or to see normally, Drum said.
The lenses’ drawback: Some colors, such as yellows, that patients could see normally become harder to see while wearing the glasses, he said.
ColorMax executives said they never implied that the lenses cure colorblindness.
“We have no intention of misleading the public at all,” ColorMax director Julie Kim said. “But they will greatly improve color perception to a lot of people.”
Patients try on 10 ColorMax lenses before buying, to see which works, she said. She said the company has reports from patients of seeing dramatically better.
James Bailey of the Southern California College of Optometry, a ColorMax advisor, said that if a patient can’t tell red from orange, the right lenses might make the red more magenta and the orange more yellow, enough difference to distinguish.
Drum said the technology is not new. He described reports dating back to 1817 of people trying filters to distinguish colors. Some optometrists have prescribed a red contact lens or other filtering techniques.
The lenses are expected to deliver a financial breakthrough for ColorMax.
In the third quarter ended Sept. 30, the company lost $858,766 on less than $10,000 in revenue. Company officials now project sales of almost $3.2 million over the next year, growing to $21.4 million in 2002, Kim said.
