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Gene Therapy Restores Sight To Blind
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like we have found a cure for genetic blindness (clinical trial — abstract — paper [PDF] — ABC News video). This gene therapy treatment increases both cone and rod photoreceptor-based vision. These engineered viruses are implanted to do our bidding to restore vision. Clinical trials on 6 children and young people proved the therapy and didn't find any notable side effects." Any blind person, especially any adapted and competent one, who wants to gain the sense of sight would be well advised to study Oliver Sachs's classic piece "To See and Not See."
Braille? Text to speech? Any one of the other multitude of ways that visually impaired people deal with daily to get through life meant for people with vision?
Not to be blunt, but seriously...
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
"All three patients showed a statistically significant increase in visual sensitivity at 30 days after treatment localized to retinal areas that had received the vector."
Well, one notable side-affect of the virus was improved vision.
It seems that you do not appreciate how long it takes to do real research.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
My children might have an incurable genetic blindness (we haven't tested them) that causes progressive blindness. After researching a bit, I found that the blind and visually impaired can use computers quite well with screen readers, but there wasn't a lot of accessible software -- especially games. http://www.audio-games.net/ was a great resource and helped me design an accessible audio-RPG called Entombed. http://www.blind-games.com/ - Full disclaimer: my site. I think the biggest hurdle (obvious from reading some of these comments) is that there isn't a lot of awareness that the blind can navigate and use computers.
Losing sight has always been my greatest fear. I understand a lot of blind people can live perfectly fine lives, but I can't think of many worse futures
Agree wholeheartedly. I was blind for a year, and was cured. Once you lose your sight you would crawl through broken glass if it meant you could get your eyesight back.
I can see my wife's face, and my daughters are beautiful. Bring on science.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I have retinitis pigmentosa which affects me in a number of different ways. At the moment it's the night blindness that's the most problematic. But as the disease is a degenerative one and as there's no way to predict (or even give a rough estimate of) the time when I will be fully blind, not a day goes past when I don't think of what it will be like to be completely in the dark. I read these stories all the time and they're all like stories on holographic storage tech: Just 5-10 more years and it'll be here for me to enjoy...
As usual, ABC News reaches for the M word. Nothing supernatural.. more like many years of painstaking and brilliant science.
Um, it takes a fuck load more than SIX kids to /PROVE/ something. SIX isn't anywhere close to statistical significance, nor does it even remotely demonstrate safety. Proven/proof are VERY big words and shouldn't be thrown around lightly. These preliminary results may be encouraging, but are FAR from proof. Especially, in the medical field.