Teeth are bleached for a brighter smile, sags and wrinkles tightened for a youthful glow -- can eye-color surgery be far behind? Apparently not, according to the head of a California medical group who says he can change brown eyes into baby blues.

"Anyone who has brown eyes has blue eyes underneath and it's covered by a thin layer of pigment,"
explains Gregg Homer of Stroma Medical Corporation in Laguna Beach, Calif.
His company, he says, has developed a laser that can remove the brown pigment from the eye in as little as 20 seconds while a patient stares at a tiny screen.
Treated eyes get darker initially, Dr. Homer says, but begin turning blue within two weeks, with the entire conversion complete at four weeks.

Once the procedure is perfected and made available -- a process that could take another three years -- it's expected to cost about $5,000.

Human beings originally all had brown eyes, scientists at the University of Copenhagen have reported. Blue eyes, they found, are the result of a gene mutation that occurred some 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

The eye-color laser surgery is not reversible, Dr. Homer said, so patients opting for this procedure when it becomes available should be committed to going blue.