Gene Therapy Cures Color-Blind Monkeys

SpuriousLogic writes "After receiving injections of genes that produce color-detecting proteins, two color-blind monkeys have seen red and green for the first time. Except in its extreme forms, color blindness isn't a debilitating condition, but it's a convenient stand-in for other types of blindness that might be treated with gene therapy. The monkey success raises the possibility of reversing those diseases, in a manner that most scientists considered impossible. 'We said it was possible to give an adult monkey with a model of human red-green color blindness the retina of a person with normal color vision. Every single person I talked to said, absolutely not,' said study co-author Jay Neitz, a University of Washington ophthalmologist. 'And almost every unsolved vision defect out there has this component in one way or another, where the ability to translate light into a gene signal is involved.' The full-spectrum supplementation of the squirrel monkeys' sight, described Wednesday in Nature, comes just less than a year after researchers used gene therapy to restore light perception in people afflicted by Leber Congenital Amaurosis, a rare and untreatable form of blindness."

Comments

Re:biotech rocks

[Runaway1956]

GM foods? Hmmm. I object to GM foods for a couple of reasons, IN ADDITION to simple queasiness.

First, the GM foods are replacing a number of cultivars. A widely varied pool of genes, nationwide and world wide are being replaced with a monoculture. Never a good idea. One blight that affects the favored cultivar can ensure widespread hunger, and possibly starvation.

Second, man evolved as an omnivore. We take nourishment from almost anything and everything that doesn't take nourishment from us first. In fact, the healthiest people are those who consume a wide variety of foods. Again - we are replacing that wide variety with monocultures. Might we be overlooking the importance of some thing? Hmmmm.

THIRD - those monocultures are developed and marketed by corporations that make full use of "copyright" "patent" and any other laws they can bring to bear. Using those foods with licenses attached pretty much gives a small group of developers a HUGE financial leverage on EVERYONE.

Personally, I might be willing to pay for a gene therapy treatment for something like this. I am NOT willing to pay big corporations to monopolize the world food supply. Big difference, IMHO.

I don't even think there is any irony in my attitude.