The story of blindness in premature babies

Perhaps on such a relaxed evening as this, one might reflect on the problem more freely and recall that all living matter is vulnerable to the injurious effects of oxygen and man is certainly no exception. It is strange indeed that the element upon which our very existence depends, should at the same time be so alien, and withstood only by the antioxidant defence mechanisms our cells have elaborated. We are born into and live in a poisonous atmosphere. Growing retinal vessels die because they have not yet acquired these defences and we all age and die because, it is thought, we lose them. As Gerschman so strikingly expressed it:--"The normal life span can be considered as a survival time for the organism exposed to 0.2 atmospheres of oxygen"--and that is air at sea level.