> Artificial tears helps prevent dry eye. Dry eye can lead to corneal abrasions and corneal ulcers.

Okay great, wasn't really the question.

> I’m not saying it’s something people should do all the time

Nor have I accused you of saying as much, nor interpreted your statements to mean as much. I appreciate you trying to address what you believe is at issue, though. What you have said was:

> If you don’t use artificial tears [...] you run a risk of developing some nasty issues that can also lead towards enucleation.

Which is a statement of correlation. Can you support it other than simply saying "moistening your eye helps prevent your eyes from being dry and the issues that that can lead to?" Total dry eye sufferers comprise about 13% of the most at-risk age group of 50+ in the US, and of course that total of sufferers includes those not within that age group. Compared to total population it's about *5%. The apparent common sense simplicity of your above first two sentences notwithstanding, I don't believe my skepticism of that stated correlative relationship is undue.

And for my part, to also address possible misinterpretation, I'm not saying people shouldn't use them. What I'm asking is that statements of correlation that imply a product is indespensible to everyone either be supported or couched in appropriate qualifiers required for the statement to be supported.

Edit: The asterisk, 4% became 5% to round up appropriately. I thought I'd already hit the 5 but apparently had not. Apologies.