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Q: medical (strange) ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   1 Comment )
Question  
Subject: medical (strange)
Category: Science
Asked by: tonynicko-ga
List Price: $3.00
Posted: 09 Sep 2003 03:50 PDT
Expires: 09 Oct 2003 03:50 PDT
Question ID: 253783
can you actually pop out your eye?
Answer  
Subject: Re: medical (strange)
Answered By: mvguy-ga on 09 Sep 2003 06:56 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
You have nothing to worry about. Your eye is firmly attached to your
head with the ocular muscles as well as other connective tissue.

First, to see how firmly attached it is, look at the pictures on these
pages:

Theory of Eye Motion
http://cim.ucdavis.edu/Eyes/eyeText.htm

Eye Muscles
http://kobiljak.msu.edu/CAI/ANT551/Unit2/Lab10/U2_L10_O1_2.html

Extrinsic eye muscles
http://www.biology.eku.edu/FARRAR/Eye_extrinsicmuscles.jpg

As you can see, for the eye to pop out would require for the six
muscles holding the eye in to suddenly vanish or somehow be
disconnected.

If you'd like a more graphic description, here is an explanation by an
eye surgeon explaining why the sci-fi scenario of removing eyes to do
things with them isn't plausible:

Human eyes can't pull out on stalks 
"As many of you know, I am an ophthalmologist (eye surgeon), actually
a retina surgeon. So, on about a weekly basis, I operate on people's
eyes, making beautiful incisions on the surface of the eye, through
the tough connective tissues on the surface, exposing the muscles and
the lovely white eyeball (globe) itself. Sure, the eye is attached to
the brain by a "stalk", the optic nerve, but, there is a whole lot of
stuff in front of the stalk. Hey, God (or whatever creative force you
believe in) made your eyes to last!!!!
"Think about it, if your eye could hang out on a stalk, then no one
could wear contact lenses, since they'd get lost back there in near
your brain (which is impossible)!
"Try this experiment at home: Look in the mirror, gently pull down
your lower lid. You'll see that inside the eyelid it is pink. And,
down at the bottom, the pink bit meets up with the white of your eye,
and is attached VERY firmly there. Well, there is exactly the same
thing under
your upper lid. You just cannot reach much farther than 8 mm above the
colored part of your eye because all the connective tissue stops you!
"Also, the "stalk" only has about 10 millimeters (less than
half-an-inch) of 'play', so even if one COULD pull out the globe in
that fashion, it would never clear the eyelids. I routinely hook the
muscles and pull with a great deal of force on the eyes, they never
come forward more than about 3 mm (which makes the surgery a lot
harder, believe me!!!)...
"In fact, when we REMOVE human eyes (because of a tumor in the eye, or
due to severe trauma to the eye) we carefully cut away all the
connective tissue, and separate the eye muscles that envelope the
globe, until all we are left with is the lovely white eyeball and the
optic nerve to which it is attached. We then pull as hard as we can so
we can cut the nerve as far behind the back of the globe as possible
(this is especially important for eye cancer cases). Even after
clearing all that tissue away, I can tell you from much personal
experience, that indeed, the eye only can 'come out' several
millimeters..."
http://bboard.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/5/2153/34052?

I hope this fully answers your question.

Sincerely,

Mvguy-ga







Google search term: eyes "connective tissue" "come out"
://www.google.com/search?q=eyes+%22connective+tissue%22+%22come+out%22

Google Images search: eye muscles
http://images.google.com/images?q=eye+muscles
tonynicko-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars
nice one, I win the bet!

Comments  
Subject: Re: medical (strange)
From: pugwashjw-ga on 10 Sep 2003 07:26 PDT
 
What a wonderful description of the eye from a surgeon. And mentioning
God. It proves one thing, though, that evolution is just , still, only
a theory, and that leaves the single fact...creation... The eye just
cannot evolve. Its got to be complete and working right from the
outset. Q.E.D.

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