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7/365 What is bone cement? It's a polymer, a chain of 'mer' units - MMA, methylmethacrylate - and is therefore known as PMMA or, more commonly, under one of the trade names below. 
The inert effect of PMMA in the human body was first noticed by Harold Ridley, an ophthalmic surgeon, who looked after pilots after WW2, removing shrapnel from their eyes. He noticed that pilots who flew behind glass canopies developed an aggressive foreign body reaction
However, Spitfire pilots who flew behind their streamlined canopies made from Lucite/ Perspex, produced no foreign body reaction around the fragments of PMMA. This prompted him to make the first intraocular lenses out of PMMA.
