Color Blindness

What is color blindness?

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Color blindness is a form of color deficiency that is caused by a fault in the development of the retinal cones. It is not actually "blindness."

There are 3 types of cones in the eye: S cones ("blue"), M cones ("green"), and L cones ("red"), and two major types of color blindness: red & green and blue & yellow.

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The trait of color blindness is strongly influenced by the X chromosome. Men only have one X chomosome, and women have two (only one of the X chromosomes needs to actually be functional in order for a person to have full color vision), which is why color blindness is more common in men.

There are very simple tests that can be performed to test for color blindess or deficiency. You can see some samples at Wikipedia.

 

How is it treated?

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Unfortunately, there is no treatment for color blindness.