editor's perspective

It's Not "Contacts," It's Contact Lenses

BY JOSEPH T. BARR, OD, MS, EDITOR
June 1999

Ben Franklin once said, "Put nothing into your eye except for your elbow." He wasn't just trying to sell bifocal eyeglasses, he also had a high regard for the safety of eyes as well as the preciousness of eyesight.

I recently read an article in a professional publication in which one eyecare professional was speaking to another, and the one referred to contact lenses as "contacts." I must tell you, I was nauseated. Oh sure, it's fine for our patients to call them "contacts," or for the lay press to call them "contacts" (though I wish they wouldn't), and it may even be okay for our staff to say "contacts" when conversing with our patients. But my mentor, Neal Bailey, O.D., Ph.D., years ago taught me not to say "contacts" nor to let the word be used on our journal's printed pages when referring to contact lenses.

Contact lenses have been trivialized too much already. We need to maintain their integrity. They may be disposable, and you may be able to purchase them from nonprofessionals over the phone or the Internet, and people may even inappropriately share them with their friends, but we need to discuss them in a serious manner with our patients and with one another.

My Web site dictionary refers to the use of the term "contacts" as informal. In my opinion, it has no place in our literature. I've tried to keep "contacts" out of consumer pieces that I've edited, but the Publisher insists on using it. I regret that. It's contact lenses. "Contact" implies that there's a safety issue because it rests on living tissue, and "lens" implies that it has to do with vision. "Contacts" sounds like bits of candy or some electrical thing. "Contacts" sounds too trivial. Give them the respect they deserve, these precious, little, medical, optical devices. Call them what they are -- call them contact lenses.

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