Color blindness

From: David Lubkin (lubkin@unreasonable.com)
Date: Tue Sep 12 2000 - 19:08:19 MDT


On 9/5/00, at 1:26 PM, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:

>Technotranscendence wrote:
>>
>> (I perhaps shouldn't use the feminine pronoun here, since from what I've
>> read colorblind people are all males. This is also true of my experience.
>> I've never met a colorblind female human.)

>My mother is color blind. From my own reading on the subject, somewhere around
>95% of color blind people are male, AFAIKR

8% of males are color-deficient in some respect; 0.5% of females are. So your
SWAG is pretty accurate.

A friend of mine (female) was studying to be an epidemiologist and had to switch
careers because there was a lot of staring at slides that had been stained to
delineate structure. She is totally color-blind, and couldn't distinguish stain
boundaries.

On the other hand, I used to work with a red-green color-blind programmer who
could reliably distinguish colors by saturation, rather than tint.

On 9/5/00, at 2:49 PM, Technotranscendence wrote:

>Since there are different forms of color blindness, I wonder what the
>breakdown is. But this was all caused by a parenthetic comment, so perhaps
>it's best just to not added new branches to this thread.:)

I can't find where I put the exact breakdown of color-blindness forms. When I
find it, I'll email Daniel privately unless anyone else cares. But the most
common kind is red-green, followed by blue, followed by total.

Total color-blindness is very rare, but relatively frequent among Moroccan,
Iraqi, and Iranian Jews. The highest incidence worldwide is in incestuous
families. The dubious distinction of first place is a family residing on the
Island of Fuur in the north of Denmark.

On the island of Pingelap, 12% of the population is totally color-blind.
They make excellent night fishermen, but they are not considered suitable
mates by non-achromats. They can't read normal-sized print, or even
reliably pick berries.

Color-blindness is not always due to genetic factors; it can also be caused
by injury or illness.

-- David Lubkin.

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