Morris Waxler, F.D.A. Official Who Reversed Stance on Lasik, Dies at 88

Dr. Morris Waxler, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration official who helped approve laser devices used for Lasik eye surgery and later campaigned against the procedure, died on Jan. 2 in a hospital in Madison, Wis. He was 88. The cause was a stroke, his wife, Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, said.

From 1996 to 2000, Dr. Waxler led a government team that evaluated and tightened engineering and clinical standards for laser devices, and in 1999 he oversaw the original approval of the devices later used for Lasik in the United States. Patients who had undergone the surgery began complaining of distorted sight, halos, dryness, excessive glare, impaired night vision and chronic pain, he said in a 2011 petition to the F.D.A., and Dr.

Cynthia MacKay said he discovered that some claimed “temporary and treatable side effects” were actually “devastating, untreatable, permanent complications.” By 2010 Dr. Waxler had publicly acknowledged he had been wrong about the safety of the procedure. In a 2011 petition to the F.D.A.

he asked the agency to issue a public health advisory and withdraw the devices, writing that “many thousands of eyes have been damaged beyond repair by LASIK devices since the 1990s” and accusing surgeons and manufacturers of a close relationship that left the agency “deprived of knowledge of the full extent of Lasik injuries.” He renewed his request in 2014, but the F.D.A.

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