Colour+Blindness

=Colour Blindness (Blue-Green):=


 * Patrick Hancock**
 * Period 7, Rube**
 * Science**
 * One World Essay – Colour Blindness**

Image now not being able to see any colours**.** Imagine not being able to distinguish green from red. If you are one of the unlucky 7% of the human population that is colorblind then these imaginations become a reality. Colour Blindness is both an inherited genetic deficiency and can occur naturally as the body interacts with the world. That is the body gets older and injury or disease becomes more likely, including to the eye.

It remains a scientific fact that males tend to be more likely to be colour blind than girls. Colour blindness is passed on through a faulty colour vision gene on the X chromosome as a recessive disorder. A regressive disorder may be described as a gene in one strand of DNA that is weaker than the corresponding gene in another strand of DNA. Females as XX do not carry the Y chromosome. [] I believe a more common understanding of this concept is eye colour with the brown eyes being more common and dominant over regressive blue eyes. However, for colour blindness this means it shows up more commonly in men. and colour blindness can be carried silently by women. According to the Online Mendelian Inheritance database at John Hopkins University, there are 19 chromosomes and 56 different genes that are capable of causing colour inherited colour blindness.


 * Inherited Colour Blindness:** People have 3 types of cone cells in the eye. Each cone senses three colours, blue, green or red light. People who are not colour blind can interpret the different amounts of these colours. Cone cells are found in the macula, which is central part of the retina. Inherited colour blindness occurs when one of the cones doesn’t function correctly or is simply non-existent. The vision problem does not change over time.

There are 3 types of inherited colour blindness: Dichromacy is a colour vision defect in which one of the three basic colour mechanisms **is** either not working or non-existent in the retina. **http://aschenator.hubpages.com/hub/Types-of-dichromacy**
 * Anomalous occurs when one of the three cone pigments are negatively altered. A cone pigment is the eyes responsive area. **http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/optics/colvisn.htm**
 * Monochomacy is also known as total colour blindness. It is the inability to distinguish any colours. This basically means that the person views everything as if it were a black and white television. **http://www.colblindor.com/2007/07/20/monochromacy-complete-color-blindness/**

However colour blindness is not always inherited. Some causing of colour blindness are ageing, eye injury, side effects of specific medicines**.** The medicine, hydroxychloroquine which is used in the treatment of arthritis, can have the side affect of causing colorblindness. **http://www.drugs.com/enc/color-blindness.html**

[] Another benefit of colour blindness was that in World War II, armies used people with colorblindness to detect the camouflaged items and people wearing camouflage. Despite this not being useful to people who have colourblind today, it was very useful to people who were colourblind and the armies of the people who were colourblind in 1939 - 1945
 * Benefits of colour blindness**: There is one main benefit of colour blindness is that they are better are detecting camouflaged insects than people with broader vision. This is because the reduction in colour signals makes the brightness and texture of object become clearer and more apparent. [|**http://discovermagazine.com/2007/apr/the-upside-of-color-blindness**]

Social /Cultural/ economical disadvantages.
 * Disadvantages of colour blindness:**

There are many more disadvantages to colorblindness than there are advantages especially in our modern day life style. Take driving to work for example. How many traffic lights or break lights would you encounter? I don’t believe it would be possible to drive in any capital city let alone Av. Prado being colour blind! This is especially made even more demanding when the biggest colour blindness is between red and green. The following disadvantages are from a that man is colorblind and has noted these disadvantages to be constant daily problems. Most of the disadvantages stated are relatively minor though. For example people who are colour blind might eat a passion fruit instead of an orange because in a way they look a like. Some colour-blind people also do not notice wether the fruit is ripe or not. On the right is what a person who is red-green colourblind will see when coming across a traffic light []
 * http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/colour_blindness.shtml**

[] People who are colour blind do not see the 7 in this picture

One of the main Economic limitations of being colorblind is in the work place.


 * There are some jobs that do not readily hire people who are colorblind.** These jobs involve transportation, electronics and the fashion industries. Is this discrimination or a natural safety mechanism? I believe it is a common sense approach since all of these industries employ people who use color definition as an important process or safety control. Would any self-employed colour-blind electrician re-wire their own house or invest thousands designing his or her own fashion empire?


 * An economic benefit may exist from one small company and there may be light at the end of the tunnel for the person that is colorblind sufferers.** There are now glasses for people who are colorblind so that they can see colours with more clarity. The company that makes these glasses is called “Colorlite.” The product is still in its infancy and being developed however, the bottom line is that there is colour at the end of the tunnel for colour-blind patients. **http://www.colourvision.info/patient_should_know.htm**


 * Bibliography:**

- "Chromosomes Involved in Color Blindness." // Color Blindness Viewed through Colorblind Eyes //. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. .

- "For the Color Blind." // About Color Blindness //. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. .

- "Colour Blindness." // Home //. Web. 10 Mar. 2012. .

- // BBC News //. BBC. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. 

- "Colour Blindness." // - Information from Bupa on Colour Blindness //. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. . - "Mind & Brain / Senses." // The Upside of Color Blindness //. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. . - "Color Blindness Limitations." // What Is Color Blindness, Causes, Tests, Types //. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. .