Fagpressenytt

One of the obscure details revealed in the press on the day after the engagement of Harry and Meghan probably escaped most who read the news that day. Yet something very specific about the family of the prospective new Royal bride struck me 'like a bolt from the blue.' Although not being particularly drawn to the Royal news, I glanced through the wide coverage in my daily copy of The Times. Suddenly I was thunderstruck; for there in tiny print, as if an aside, and actually of interest to very few who would read it, was the statement that Meghan's father is colour blind. The statement went further - 'but', said the newsprint, ‘this condition did not hinder his successful career as a lighting director and cinematographer'.
Just a simple matter-of-fact statement of absolutely no consequence or interest to the vast majority of readers. Why ever did they include it? But to me it was enlightening, extremely revealing, in fact the most important sentence of my news reading that week or even month.
I have been a major player in the scientific world of colour vision problems in life ever since I discovered that a boy who challenged me to the board game Halma aged thirteen could not tell the difference between the purple and blue counters he had to move - an embarrassing handicap he was reluctant to admit as he quickly lost the game to me! I became intrigued and it became my life's work from that moment on! My school summer project on the condition gained top marks but I doubt that the teachers understood a word of it! Two decades later I wrote the definitive textbook on the subject. Now approaching my seventh decade I am still involved in this fascinating medical condition, and my textbook is still read thirty years since first publication. Shortly after its publication I was invited to write the UK Guidelines on colour blindness for the Government's Health and Safety Executive which has remained the main guidelines to this day.

The eye condition colour blindness, as it is commonly referred, to is transferred from fathers to all their daughters, who do not show this interesting characteristic outwardly but always carry this trait in their genetic fingerprint to the next generation. This special news has excited me since the Royal family are now likely to have members who are colour blind in the very next generation within just a few years!
They will join the select few prominent politicians, sports personalities and newscasters, male celebrities and actors- household names who too share this common trait though you wouldn't know it as many are reluctant to tell the world. Actors yes, but not so many actresses for this inherited condition affec