The December Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* goes to Dr. Robert Maloney, a Los Angeles ophthalmologist who is at the cutting-edge of degrading eye specialists into cosmetic enhancement agents.

A leading promoter of Lasik surgery, Maloney is now hoping to make a mint by marketing JewelEye cosmetic implants, a procedure by which he implants tiny platinum jewels into the whites of patients’ eyes.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology has issued a statement warning that the JewelEye has not been proven safe. Maloney asserts the procedure is safe and does not threaten the structure of the eye.

Maloney told the Wall Street Journal that he decided to start hawking the procedure, invented by a Dutch eye doctor, because the jewels are “neat” and “I love innovating.” The price for the 20-minute surgery and implant: $3,900.

Maloney, the subject of an October profile in the Wall Street Journal, tells an interesting story of how he got into ophthalmology. After attending medical school, “he came to a disquieting conclusion: ‘I really didn't like sick people.’ He wondered whether he should even become a doctor. Then he discovered the budding field of corrective eye surgery, where he could treat healthy people willing to pay a lot of money to see and feel better.”

Source: Rhonda Rundle, “Marketing Vision: Eye Doctor to Elite Blazes New Trail in Selling Surgery,” Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2004.

*In a 1991 internal memorandum, then-World Bank economist Lawrence Summers argued for the transfer of waste and dirty industries from industrialized to developing countries. “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?” wrote Summers, who went on to serve as Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration and is now president of Harvard University. “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. ... I’ve always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.” Summers later said the memo was meant to be ironic.