» Posted on Optoblog - Is There a Negative Campaign Against Biofinity?

September 29, 2007

Posted on Optoblog - Is There a Negative Campaign Against Biofinity?

September 29th 2007 Posted to Optometry

I posted an entry on my practice website about the Biofinity lens. Within less than 2 hours, I got the following comment in the comment moderation cue: Author : John Bird (IP: 149.77.10.40 , srvnyc2.nyc.deshaw.com) E-mail : jbird@aol.com URL : Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=149.77.10.40 Comment: I have tried Biofinity and quickly went back to Oasys. Oasys […]

I posted an entry on my practice website about the Biofinity lens. Within less than 2 hours, I got the following comment in the comment moderation cue:

Author : John Bird (IP: 149.77.10.40 , srvnyc2.nyc.deshaw.com)
E-mail : jbird@aol.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=149.77.10.40
Comment:
I have tried Biofinity and quickly went back to Oasys. Oasys is a more comfortable lens, and it doesn’t have the problems with protein build up that Biofinity does.

Before approving the comment, I sent the following e-mail to “John Bird”:

Mr. Bird,
I’m skeptical of your comment. Tell me who you are, how you know the
phrase “protein build up” and how you happened upon my article shortly
after it was posted, and then I’ll think about approving it for my
patients to see.

Then I recieved word from AOL that the message couldn’t be delivered:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

jbird@aol.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 13): 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND

So, someone made up a fake name and e-mail address and tried to push people away from Biofinity to Acuvue Oasys. The IP address links the poster to a company named D.E. Shaw, a “global investment and technology development firm.” He could be just a random employee of a big company in New York who happens to subscribe to content from the website of a small optometrist office in Utah.

Or…what do you think?

And is there any truth to Biofinity getting deposit build up? From what I’ve read the Aquaform material is supposed to resist deposits.