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Gene Therapy Causes Blind Woman To Grow New Fovea

Posted by timothy on from the way-beyond-lasik dept.

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."

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Damn! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    And I thought zits were bad.

  2. Re:the stuff of science fiction by PitaBred · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Very few suicides in the whole range of suicides are related to gender issues. It may be fairly high in the group of people who feel cross-gender, but that's still a very small percentage of the overall suicide rate.

    --
    My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  3. Re:Terrifying by ae1294 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Can you imagine living in darkness your whole life and then see for the first time? It would be amazing to see that there is more to surfaces than just texture.

    Honestly, lets hope she doesn't end up online, alone, browsing the internet when she comes across 4chan.... Really I see some major ethical problems for technology like this.

    {The scary door, or how I went from a government check every week to homeless}

    Doctor - Ok there you go, we have given you the power of sight.
    Patient - Wow thanks, wait... my god... the world is full of hideously ugly things!
    Doctor - Of coarse! That's why we fixed your eyes!
    Patient - (crying) why!
    Doctor - (smiling) ...for the LuLz...

  4. Re:the stuff of science fiction by ae1294 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say it... If I could get an injection and grow a vagina to go with my penis I'd probably never leave the house again except to meet up with women who decided to grow a penis to go with their vagina's.

    I'm a sick sick fuck.... o well!