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Japanese Scientists Create Artificial Eyeballs
MikeyMars writes: "CNN is reporting that Japanese scientists have grown artificial eyeballs [cnn.com] for tadpoles. This is the first time in the world something like this has been accomplished. 'Since the basics of body-making is common to that of human beings, I think this might help enable people to regain vision in the future,' Asashima was quoted as saying."
The BBC are also carrying this story @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1 743000/1743987.stm
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From a film made more than 20 years ago:
INT. COLD STORAGE ROOM NIGHT
Except for the work table with its sharp gleaming instruments, the room is as barren and sterile as a morgue. The glass-doored apartments in the walls look like crypts. Some of them small as post office boxes. From one of the Chew removes a vacuum, packed box. Carefully separating the seal, he reaches into the purple jell and with a pair of tweezers extracts an eye.
Through the jeweler's glass, which he has not bothered to remove, Chew holds the eye up to the light and studies it a moment. His other hand searches through his pockets.
...
CHEW: I know you. I made your eyes. You are nexus - 6.
ROY: If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes.
The entire original script may be found at http://www.nootrope.net/bladerunner.html
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They actually managed to restore the sight of a tadpole which had had its eye surgically removed. The new eye reacted to light a week later. The tadpole was later disected, and the researchers confirmed that the optic nerve had reattached itself.
I am sceptical of this working for more developmentally mature organisms, especially in adult mammals, however. The nerve reattachment is tricky, and there is other stuff besides. Nerve cells need to be trained early in development. There have been experiments on kittens, where one eye is sown shut after birth, and then allowed to open normally several weeks later. The kittens are always blind in that eye. Even if a human adult had sight in childhood, and lost his eyes later, I wonder if the nerve cells could be retrained for newly grown eyes.