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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."
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/
I have a feeling this will be up for a Nobel Prize. It was seriously groundbreaking work and the entire vision science community is excited about it.
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...
Easy for you to say, my wife's got the face of a saint - a Saint Bernard.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
There's a "design flaw" in the lens. Unlike bones, that have cells that both remove and replace bone, the lenses only have cells that smooth the surface by adding more material. After a few decades, the lens is too thick to be stretched for close focus, so we lose that ability, although distance vision may still be as good as when young.
Some people can tolerate a pair of replacement lenses, one near-focusable for reading and one far-focusable, between them covering the full range of vision. IIRC, the dominant eye is close-focusable. Contacts are available in the same arrangement, but, again, not everyone can tolerate them.
Blind people don't read slashdot. They edit it.
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