
Blind man sees wife for first time after having a tooth implanted into his eye - dlnovell
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197256/Blind-man-sees-wife-time-having-TOOTH-implanted-eye.html
======
jrockway
_By that time he had already spent eight years without his sight after a tub
of white hot aluminium exploded in his face at work in a scrapyard._

This is why you should always wear safety goggles.

~~~
burke
While true, suggesting safety goggles as a guard against exploding white-hot
aluminum just makes me think of that goggles meme. What was it again?...

~~~
jrockway
I assume there is something higher-grade than chemistry-lab splash goggles for
this. There must be some protective equipment available for people working
with white-hot aluminum.

Nobody should have to do a job that can lead to blindness.

~~~
sho
_"Nobody should have to do a job that can lead to blindness."_

I agree. Yet in our society, where efficiency must often be balanced against
safety, risk cannot be fully eliminated.

Council workers would surely be safer if the roads they repaired were closed
for the duration, but we cannot stomach the roads being fully closed.
Furniture movers would certainly suffer less chance of back injury if there
were four men lifting that dresser instead of two, yet no-one would hire them
if their prices doubled. And the aluminium smelter might well be able to
significantly reduce its injury rate by investing billions in a new process,
but the product would no longer be viable and the factory would close, simply
moving the risk to a less caring jurisdiction.

One can continue like this all day. There's always a compromise, and most
developed countries have settled upon a sweet spot. Workplace injury declines
with advancing technology, and we should certainly do our best to minimise it,
but while society values economic competitiveness over absolute personal
safety, you can never eliminate risk, and maybe not even then.

~~~
jacquesm
You'd be surprised how many jobs can lead to injuries, including blindness.

I met a piano tuner with only one eye one day. He was tuning a grand piano,
overstressed the string, it broke and the little loop at the end of it was
shot off straight into his eye...

I'll bet you he never thought that piano tuning can lead to blindness either.

~~~
rjurney
One of the most dangerous jobs is... farming. Tons of guys get arms torn off
on tractors, etc.

~~~
MaysonL
Just read on Doc Searls's blog of the death of a friend of his who fell off
his tractor...

[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2009/07/07/a-good-man-is-
ha...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2009/07/07/a-good-man-is-hard-to-
lose/)

~~~
sho
Oh, gross. What a way to go. You know it wasn't a pleasant death when the
police take a day to identify someone killed on their own property.

Sigh, I really hate the pointless deaths of good people.

------
jmatt
Smart idea using the tooth to prevent rejection.

So now I'm curious. I want to see his wife...

~~~
josefresco
shhh don't tell asdlfj2sd33 about this comment (it'll set him over the edge)

------
proee
This is why surgeons get paid the big bucks. Makes the average programming job
look pretty trivial...

~~~
asdlfj2sd33
Unless you're both a surgeon and a programmer you probably shouldn't make
sweeping statements like that.

I'm just a programming but I think a large portion of the bucks surgeons make
is due to the expense and duration of medical school.

~~~
josefresco
And the fact that they work directly to save/improve/alter life whereas great
software projects tend to be somewhat disconnected from the actual life saving
thereby making their authors somewhat removed from that 'thing' that allows
doctors to charge the big bucks.

~~~
asdlfj2sd33
You know there's a lot of medical software right? And I'm not just talking
about record keeping. What do you think most high end medical and scientific
instruments run on?

------
GiraffeNecktie
I think they talked about this in the Bible: something about an eye for a
tooth and a tooth for an eye.

~~~
asdlfj2sd33
15 points? This is currently the top comment on a medical breakthrough
restoring sight? This is why I left Slashdot.

~~~
Herring
yeah like the other comments are better. One guy wants to see the wife, the
other thinks this makes programming look trivial, etc

Surgeons don't post here & we wouldn't understand them anyway. Gimme a funny
comment any day.

------
keltecp11
I'm still confused why they would use a 'tooth' oppose to something else...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm guessing teeth can join well to flesh without rejection (mine seem good on
this anyway) and also don't reject implanting foreign matter (filings, those
little diamonds chavs^W people have, etc.) they're basically a bridging
medium; an interstitial that avoids rejection.

------
stuffthatmatter
...and then he said 'ahhhh! I'm blind!'

~~~
stuffthatmatter
I got modded down? Jeez you guys have no humor. Slashdot's way better

~~~
theblackbox
While from this thread alone this may look like slashdot, the community
happens to put a much higher emphasis on _conversation_ rather than praising
an individuals wit.

At the risk of being down modded myself for not contributing to the thread I
just thought it might be worth pointing that out and reminding those that seem
to have voted on this particular thread as though the emphasis was on humour.

I'm not exactly one to throw the first stone, as my karma/comments/submissions
are far from exemplary, but I do try to stay in keeping with the ideals of the
community.

~~~
craigs
I actually like a bit of humour; when applied correctly it can accentuate the
gist of an item and throw into sharp relief what the "community" really
thinks. In this case: facinating story, but, come on, it's from the "Daily
Mail". Humour, quite simply, is required.

------
beefman
I wish there were more Weekly World News links on HN.

------
gojomo
I hear that among some goths, a snapshot through a human-tooth-mounted lens is
the most desired MySpace Angle of all.

