Customers of the company, which has been operating for four months, can get replacement contact lenses by sending it a prescription and lenses packaging. The General Optical Council claims this breaks regulations requiring a registered doctor or optician to supervise every sale of contact lenses. A spokesman said: "We believe that the requirement that contact lenses are sold by, or under the close supervision of, an eye-care professional is to safeguard the public interest by ensuring that the clinical care of the patient is an essential element in the supply of contact lenses."Vision Direct, of Battersea, south London, has a registered practitioner working for the company, but at a separate site from where the contact lenses are sent out. Steffan Rygaard, the managing director, said he wanted to discuss the issue with the GOC before the case went ahead, adding: "I want to change the company to fit in the GOC guidelines."A breach of the Opticians Act carries a pounds 2,500 fine. "Left unchecked, it can kill significant numbers of trees fairly quickly.". A company selling contact lenses by direct mail is to be prosecuted for failing to provide customers with adequate supervision.
The General Optical Council decided it would take legal action against Vision Direct and its directors for selling cut-price contact lenses without the supervision of a qualified doctor or optician. If they are found, then large numbers of trees will have to be cut down - "sanitation felling" - to prevent the insect's spread. At the end of the summer the 5mm-long creature can disperse by flying.The beetle's favourite tree is the Norway spruce, which makes up about 8 per cent of commercial timber in Britain, and is a pest from Japan across Asia to Western Europe."It is a very real threat," said Roddie Burgess, the commission's head of plant health. A tiny, tree-eating beetle appears to have started breeding in Britain, threatening millions of pounds worth of damage to the nation's commercial timber plantations, writes Nicholas Schoon. For decades the Government's Forestry Commission has been keeping careful watch for the spruce bark beetle. Every imported consignment of timber either has to be stripped of its bark or have been heated in a kiln before it is allowed in Britain, and inspectors check for signs of the insect at ports. Now, for the first time, there is evidence that the beetle has crossed from the Continent and established itself here.
Twenty of them were found in an early warning trap located close to the Shotton Paper mill near Chester. The traps, dotted around the country, contain a chemical - pheromone - which the beetles find irresistible.Forestry Commission officials believe these insects came from the mill's stockpile of logs, which come from forests across Britain to provide raw material to make newsprint.The commission is now checking every forest which provided timber for the mill, to find out if the beetle is present. We were numb."We just can't help him and there's nothing anybody else can do. You do find yourself wringing your hands and feeling completely helpless. But by going public this is our way of helping and hope this will put pressure on the authorities to undertake more research."Terry Warne said that "Chris was a healthy eater because he had his sports at the back of his mind. Now he doesn't even know where he is or why, and he has never even asked what is wrong with him.". Yesterday they decided to make their son's condition public to raise awareness of the disease.His mother Shirley, 60, said: "We knew about CJD but like everyone else we thought it would never happen to us.
When Chris was in hospital I prepared myself for the worst but never dreamt he would have something like this. So far this year 13 people have been confirmed with the incurable illness.Mr Warne's symptoms began nine months ago when he became tired and withdrawn and received treatment for stress. Within six months he had been forced to give up his job and was admitted to Derbyshire Royal Infirmary for tests, after which his parents were told their son had CJD. More than 163,000 BSE cases have been confirmed since 1985, but CJD typically takes more than 10 years to show up In 1994 there were three v-CJD deaths In 1995 there were 10.
Between 1985 and 1989 - after the discovery - almost half a million BSE-infected cattle were used for food, according to Professor Roy Anderson of Oxford University.The rapid rise in v-CJD cases echoes that of BSE, which rose from a few hundred cases a year, to thousands. Formerly a keen footballer, cricketer and skier, he now needs round-the-clock care at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre, where doctors say he has less than a year to live."I saw him at the hospital. He was standing and then his legs went from under him," his father Terry, 65, said last night. "It was like that clip they show on TV of the cow with BSE."Bovine spongiform encepalopathy (BSE) was first recognised in April 1985, though scientists have calculated that 30,000 BSE-infected animals may have been used for food in the five previous years. The toll of cases of the fatal new variant of Creutzfelt-Jakob Disease, v-CJD, thought to be caused by exposure to "mad cow disease", is rising inexorably. Yesterday a 36-year-old fitness fanatic living in Ripley, Derbyshire, was revealed as the 26th known British case, leaving his parents distraught at the sight of their son slowly dying before their eyes. Chris Warne, a computer systems analyst, was officially diagnosed as having v-CJD three weeks ago after first showing signs of illness at the end of last year. But he did not tell his wife of the planned stunt, fearing she might object and make him call it off..
