“When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide” wrote Milton in the sonnet “On His Blindness”1 when life expectancy was much shorter than it is as we approach the millennium. By the end of this century 6.5% of the population of the European Union will be aged 75 and over.2 Evans and Wormald3 have shown an increase in blind registrations attributed to age related maculopathy (ARM) in the order of 30–40% from 1950 to 1990. The Melton Mowbray study4 has shown prevalence rates for any ARM of between 82% and 86% with drusen found in 72.8% of the population aged 77–90. This is the same age group …