May 28, 2026

Knock Knock Eye: I Ran A Cow Eyeball Dissection Station

35 minutes

I'm not in a great mood and I'll tell you why. A mini fridge in our family room sprang a slow leak, and before I knew it I was $5,000 deep in a restoration black box with no idea whether any of those numbers were real. Which, of course, got me thinking about healthcare cost transparency, because everything eventually does.

From there I get into Oregon's SB 951, the strongest corporate practice of medicine law in the country, and what it might mean in 2029 for the private equity firms (and one suspiciously friendly-sounding Canadian pension fund) currently buying up ophthalmology.

After the break I cross over into veterinary land to talk about the cow eye dissection I ran with about 50 middle schoolers at my kids' school. The tapetum lucidum, the onion-layered lens, why goats have rectangle pupils, and the brand-new respect I now have for teachers. We finish up in the animal vision spectrum, where the mantis shrimp absolutely embarrasses the rest of us.

Takeaways:

Oregon's SB 951 requires all medical practices in the state to be physician-owned and free of outside investor influence by 2029, a potential turning point for private equity in ophthalmology

NVISION Eye Centers is majority-owned by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, a $250 billion Canadian fund that functions, in effect, like a private equity firm

The Central Africa Ebola outbreak is unlikely to become a pandemic, but reduced WHO funding after the U.S. withdrawal weakens global surveillance and rapid response

The tapetum lucidum is a reflective layer behind the retina in cows, dogs, cats, and many other mammals that bounces light back through the photoreceptors, dramatically improving night vision and explains the glowing-eyes phenomenon

Humans have three color cones; mantis shrimp have 12 to 16 plus UV, infrared, and polarized light detection; dogs and cats see dichromatic blues and yellows; whales and dolphins see only in monochrome

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