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Dr. John Taboada
201222-F-YT892-0004.JPG Photo By: Jennifer Gonzalez

Joint Base San Antonio Randolph - Dr. John Taboada in his USAF School of Aerospace Medicine laser laboratory at Brooks AFB in the mid-1960s. Dr. Taboada, a physicist for USAFSAM during his 40-year career, made one of the world’s greatest discoveries that has benefited both Air Force aviators and American citizens suffering from myopia or near-sightedness. While working under an Air Force contract to the U.S. Navy, the latter concerned about the bioeffects on submariners’ vision during a time when subs used green excimer lasers to communicate with each other while submerged, Dr. Taboada focused a green excimer laser on a rabbit’s eyes to determine how much damage would be created by the exposure. To his amazement, the excimer laser’s effects had a dramatic healing effect on the cornea of the rabbit’s eyes, which led Dr. Taboada to assume that the same effect using this type of laser could correct myopia in Air Force pilots to prolong their careers. As a result, he created photorefractive keratectomy or PRK, a procedure widely used today to correct myopia. PRK developed by Dr. Taboada led to the creation of LASIK surgery.


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