50 People Looking For Solar Image Of Mary Lose Sight

[DeSwiss]

50 people looking for solar image of Mary lose sight

Daily News & Analysis
Don Sebastian
Tuesday, February 26, 2008 08:55 IST



THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At least 50 people in Kottayam district have reportedly lost their vision after gazing at the sun looking for an image of Virgin Mary. Though alarmed health authorities have installed a signboard to counter the rumour that a solar image of Virgin Mary appeared to the believers, curious onlookers, including foreign travellers, have been thronging the venue of the ‘miracle’.

St Joseph’s ENT and Eye Hospital in Kanjirappally alone has recorded 48 cases of vision loss due to photochemical burns on the retina. “All our patients have similar history and symptoms. The damage is to the macula, the most sensitive part of retina. They have developed photochemical, not thermal, burns after continuously gazing at the sun,” Dr Annamma James Isaac, the hospital’s ophthalmologist, said. The hospital has been receiving patients with these abnormal symptoms since Friday. When the doctors found a pattern in the case sheets, they reported it to the district medical officer.

The health department has now put up a signboard at the hotelier’s house near Erumeli, where the divine image is said to have appeared, warning people against exposing their eyes to sunlight. Even the churches in the vicinity disowned the miracle during Sunday mass after health officers and doctors approached the clergy. The house in question has been the centre of local rumours for a few months. The hotelier, who has since moved to another house, had claimed that statues of Mother Mary in his house have been crying honey and bleeding oil and perfumes.

Though people have been flocking to the “blessed land” - hastily christened Rosa Mystica Mountain - for long, the mad rush for the image in the sky began a week ago. There are quite a few people still seeking the miracle, despite the experiences of their unfortunate predecessors and strict health warnings against gazing at the sun with the naked eye.

“The patients show varying degrees of severity. They are mostly girls in 12-26 age group. Our youngest patient is 12 and the oldest 60. Most of them were looking at the sun between 2 and 4 pm, when UV1 and UV2 rays are harshest,” Dr James Isaac said. He added that they could identify the problem as solar retinopathy because they were aware of the local sensation. “Most patients may hopefully improve their vision. But there may be long-term effects on the retina,” he added.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1152984

[liberal N proud]

1. That is what you call blind faith

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. religion vs. rational thought.

duh.

[struggle4progress]

3. Presumably they didn't know better, and some jackass for kicks told them to look

It really does help to have somebody warn you about the hazards of looking at the sun: I remember being firmly instructed as a very young child never never to look at the sun

The warnings don't always take, even with intelligent rational people

A scientist I know once told me that he had been an astronomy buff as a child and had irreparably damaged a bit of one retina by trying to check out something on the sun when young: he should have known better but he looked anyway and earned as a result a small permanent blindspot in his visual field

It's sad these people were never educated about the hazard -- and its inexcusable that someone, perhaps a snickering asshole with a superiority complex, encouraged them to look

[SidDithers]

4. It's easier to see Mary if you use a magnifying glass..nt

Sid

[struggle4progress]

5. Other people's blindness is a real hoot, eh?

[Evoman]

8. It is when they are bloody idiots. How the fuck do people like that even live.

Can they feed themselves? Can they speak a language?

[struggle4progress]

11. It's not obvious a priori that one should not stare at the sun. The fact has, of course,

been known for thousands of years, because of unfortunate incidents like this

But most of people who know this fact, do not know it because of innate intellectual superiority -- rather, they know it because somebody else who knew it had the decency to warn them about it

It is true that someone with enough background, including (say) the fact that real damage can be accomplished with lens-focussed sunlight and the fact that the eye contains a lens focussing an image on receptors in the retina, might deduce the danger from that information -- but such a deduction would only be possible for someone fortunate enough to have the educational as a result of other cultural contexts

Most people, of course, are] taught to feed themselves and to speak

[charlie]

12. Sorry struggle4progress, but it is obvious

Go outside and glance at the sun right now. Then try to imagine holding a fixed gaze for as long as you can say One Mississippi. The icepick-to-the-orbs pain should put you off, whether or not you knew someone decent enough to warn you. Knowledge of anatomy and science is not needed. This is clearly a case of religious fervency overriding sensible circuits. People do unwise and dangerous acts of devotion all the time, for their football teams, for musicians, for politicians... it's not surprising some would do them for their God.

[struggle4progress]

15. Eye injuries of early solar observers

... Thomas Harriot, who discovered sunspots independently at about the same time as Galileo, but failed to publish his observations, observed the Sun about noon in February, 1612, and then found “my sight was after dim for an houre” ...

... John Greaves (1602 – 1652), Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford ... says, that in measuring the diameter of the sun he hurt his sight, “insomuch that for some days after, to that eye, with which I observed, there appeared, as it were, a company of crows flying together in the air at a good distance. At the first I did verily believe I saw a company of crows flying in the air” ...

... Isaac Newton ... about 22 years old ... looked at the reflection of the Sun in a mirror, while standing in a darkened room — a situation almost guaranteed to maximize damage by dilating the pupil ... Newton gave a detailed account of his experience some 27 years later in a letter to John Locke ... I looked a very little while upon ye sun in a looking-glass wth my right eye & then turned my eyes into a dark corner of my chamber & winked to observe the impression made & the circles of colours wch encompassed it & how they decayed by degrees & at last vanished. This I repeated a second & a third time ... And now in a few hours time I had brought my eys to such a pass that I could look upon no bright object with either eye but I saw ye sun before me, so that I durst neither write nor read but to recover ye use of my eyes shut myself up in my chamber made dark for three days together ...

http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/vision/others.html

So some very bright people have unwittingly done something this to themselves, and it is certainly doubtful that everyone feels the "icepick-to-the-orbs pain" you describe. From several ophthalmologic professionals:

Solar retinopathy at transit of venus
Eckert S., Kampmeier J., Lang G. E.
University of Ulm, Department of Ophthalmology

... On June 8th 2004 transit of Venus could be observed in Europe ... We report two cases of male patients with solar retinopathy caused by watching the transit of Venus ... Public health education concerning the consequences of direct sun-gazing is necessary ...

http://www.dog2005.org/index8c4b.html?site=abstractview&nav=136&AID=465&lang=e

[Evoman]

14. WHAT!!!

Are you serious? The pain and extreme discomfort one suffers when looks at the sun isn't a fucking clue? The only advice ANYONE has ever given me about not looking at the sun has been about not looking at an eclipse. THAT makes sense, because it isn't too bright but it can still fry your eyes.


But looking at the sun for a religious image????? That is a whole new level of idiocy. That is like someone having to tell you not to take a knife and disembowel yourself because it might kill you.

[struggle4progress]

16. " ... There are two main mechanisms of retinal injury from solar radiation. Thermal burn is ...

... caused by looking at the sun through a telescope or through other optical aids, which can cause a temperature rise of 10-25 C in the retina. But the most common form of solar retinopathy is caused by looking at the sun without eye protection. A retinal temperature rise of as little as 4 C can trigger photochemical injury to the retinal receptor cells. The condition can occur without pain and without being immediately apparent ..."
UK hospitals assess eye damage after solar eclipse - Statistical Data Included
British Medical Journal, August 21, 1999 by Roger Dobson

[Crunchy Frog]

18. When there's signs up all over the place telling people not to...

that might be taken as a clue.

[struggle4progress]

21. If you find a link on the effect of the public education efforts, feel free to post it

Since I can only locate multiple reposts of this one news story from about a month ago, I suspect that the public education campaign has been successful

[moobu2]

9. They’ll have new eye’s in the next life, wont they? so why care?

[SidDithers]

10. Natural selection at work...

thinning the herd has always been a cruel, but necessary, part of life.

Sid

[JNelson6563]

20. Harsh.

:rofl:

[Jamastiene]

6. You can't make this shit up.

That's so sad. Didn't they know looking at the Sun will burn your retinas?

[Evoman]

7. Convert to atheism....the only thing that might make you blind is the excessive amount of jerkin off

Not looking directly AT THE FUCKING SUN!

:rofl:

[Goblinmonger]

13. I laugh everytime I see this OP in the list of R/T threads.

It is damn funny. For a nanosecond I feel bad for laughing at other human beings losing their eyesight, but, come on, this type of irony is hilarious.

What maroons.

[Crunchy Frog]

17. It seems to me that it should be possible

for people to win a Darwin prize for this sort of thing. At least maybe an honorary one.

[and-justice-for-all]

19. At least 50 people in Kottayam district have reportedly lost their vision..

D U M B.