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Gene Therapy Causes Blind Woman To Grow New Fovea
Al writes "A woman with a rare, inherited form of blindness is now able to read, thanks to a gene therapy that caused a new fovea — the part of the retina that is most densely populated with photoreceptors — to grow in her eye. The patient suffers from Leber congenital amaurosis, meaning an abnormal protein makes her photoreceptors have a severely impaired sensitivity to light. She received the experimental treatment twelve months ago when physicians injected a gene encoding a functional copy of the protein into a small part of one eye — about eight-to-nine millimeters in diameter. Along with two other patients receiving the same treatment, her eyesight improved after just a few weeks. Now the physicians report that this patient seems to have developed a new fovea, exactly where she received the injection. Because the woman has been effectively blind since birth, the results suggest that the brain is able to adapt to new visual stimuli remarkably quickly."
an amazing achievement, hopefully a preview of better things to come and a brighter future for us all
prepare the survey weasels.
But are the problems caused by the brain or just bad eyesight? I can imagine anyone 'regaining' their sight probably doesn't have the same quality eyes as someone that has never lost their vision.
But who cares if she perceives most things differently than you or me? According to the article, is seems that she has learned to read. That means that she sees text and is able to get the same meaning as we do. If it was otherwise, she wouldn't be able to read. Remember, reading is getting meaning from text.
Bloody hell man, we have newly seeing adults now! Who cares if their vision is not quite the same as ours!
Who cares if their vision is not quite the same as ours!
The newly seeing adults might, once they get over the shock and realize they still can't get a driver's license, engage in sports or many other everyday activities to the same extent as normally sighted people.
Just because we've made progress doesn't mean there isn't more to be done.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
My wife has the same disorder as the patient in the story. She learned to read by using Braille when she was 5. We have discussed this scenario many times and she likes herself just like she is (except for not getting to drive her half of our car). She is "normal" and thinks that "fixing" people is a slippery slope. Diversity comes in many forms;what happens when one day we are all the same?
That's the current theory. This result may cast questions upon the current theory. Or perhaps it won't. We'd need more details to tell. But in any case if there's a conflict, experiment trumps theory.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I care quite a bit, since I study vision... and understanding the differences between a newly seeing adult and a seeing adult really help us understand a lot about brain development and theories of vision. Things like this, and Project Prakash which I've noted above have also shown that 'critical periods' in neural development, while they exist, are a lot less important in humans than say, cats (or barn owls), where most of the classic studies of critical period have been done. This leaves me optimistic that both genetic/stem cell approaches and neural prosthesis in general have a lot more promise than was thought several years ago.
The point of my comment though, was that the summary implied that she had gained essentially normal visual function, which I doubt is the case... and that while this is an amazing treatment that can probably help quite a few people, we still have a lot of work we can do to improve it -- especially on the low-tech side such as better visual displays and therapy regimens that improve final post-operative function.
Just because we've made progress doesn't mean there isn't more to be done.
Just because there's more to be done doesn't mean we can't celebrate our achievements.
It can be a slippery slope if you treat these kinds of operations as "fixing people", but I think if you treat it instead as enabling them to do something new (to them, at least), you don't run the risk of "fixing" people who don't feel that they are broken.
Dude, if something about me doesn't work, it's broken. If they make it so it does work, it's then fixed. That's what these words mean. "But I like it like that" doesn't change anything.
Now, if you were talking about "fixing people" who have non-functionally-impairing differences (skin/hair/eye colour, accent, etc.) then that would be different.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.