For the past 10 years, Doctor Gregg Homer has been hard at work trying to perfect a new surgical procedure he hopes will change the world, but it’s not how you may think.

The Southern California–based physician of Stroma Medical has not been trying to cure cancer, AIDS, diabetes, help the paralyzed walk, the deaf hear or even the blind see. No, Dr. Gregg dreams of a world where color contacts are a thing of the past.

Dr. Gregg is close to perfecting a new 20-second laser surgical procedure that can turn brown eyes blue by removing the melanin, the pigment that gives brown eyes their mahogany hue because apparently “all brown eyes are blue underneath,” he explains in the video interview with KTLA below. “All brown-eyed people have blue pigment in their irises, too—and a quick session under a specially-tuned laser can destroy the melanin in the eye, with the change occurring gradually over two weeks. The procedure cannot change blue eyes to brown.”

The laser eye treatment is still in it’s development stages but Dr. Gregg predicts it will be available outside the United States in 18 months and inside the U.S. in three years and cost about $5000.

Hearing about this new possible “medical breakthrough,” I couldn’t help but think of Pecola, the little black girl from Toni Morrison‘s first novel, The Bluest Eye, who desperately prayed every night to have blue eyes like her white classmates to feel beautiful. I am all for people doing what they need to do to feel comfortable and attractive in their own skin, but if the eyes are truly the windows to our soul, what does it say about our society if we are so quick to change them?

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