An optometrist in British Columbia has invented a surgically implantable bionic lens that could give patients perfect vision and make glasses, contact lenses, and laser surgery obsolete. People with the specialized lenses would never get cataracts because their natural lenses, which decay over time, would have been replaced. The surgery takes eight minutes, and the patient’s sight would not only immediately improve but would be three times better than 20/20 vision. “If you can just barely see the clock at 10 feet, when you get the bionic lens you can see the clock at 30 feet away,” Garth Webb, inventor of the lens, told CBC News. Pending clinical trials, Webb said the bionic lens could be available in about two years. —J.B.