Visibility of gravitational lenses and the cosmological constant problem

Recent observations suggest appreciable star formation activity in early-type galaxies down to redshift $z\sim 0.5$. If so, there is likely to be dust in these galaxies. We consider the possibility that obscuration by dust can reconcile the observed frequency of gravitational lensing of quasar images with the considerably larger rate predicted in a low density cosmologically flat universe dominated by a cosmological constant.