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Citizen Scientists Develop Eye Drops That Provide Night Vision

Posted by Soulskill on from the cool-toys-with-no-off-switch dept.

rtoz writes: A group of scientists in California have successfully created eye drops that temporarily enable night vision. They use mixture of insulin and a chemical known as Chlorin e6 (Ce6) to enable the user to view objects clearly in darkness up to 50 meters away. Ce6 is found in some deep-sea fish and often used to treat night blindness. The solution starts to work within an hour of being applied to the user's eyes, and lasts for several hours afterward. The test subject's eyesight returned to normal the next day. The organization Science for the Masses has released a paper detailing the experiment on their website.

49 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Gutsy by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

    Maybe not so smart. Sounds kinda blurry, like a Gen I night vision scope. I think I'd wait a little bit to make sure he doesn't grow things in inappropriate places or start photosynthesizing. But they do have the benefit of previous research as some form of chemotherapy so I guess it won't kill you right off.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  2. Re:How do I get eyes like that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's a Gilson pipette with a plastic tip, not a syringe.

  3. Re:How do I get eyes like that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You get to a planet hotter than Hell.

  4. Bioengineering for fun and war by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'd hate to be in the military when this and others come down the pike.

    1. Re:Bioengineering for fun and war by rot26 · · Score: 1

      What makes you think they're not already using it?

      --



      To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
  5. Re:How do I get eyes like that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    How do I get eyes like that

    First, you gotta kill a lot of people...

  6. Re:What if you use it during the day by Enry · · Score: 2

    You grow hair on your palms and...nowait, that was...you know what, nevermind.

  7. Re:What if you use it during the day by lazy+genes · · Score: 1

    You can see through clothing.

  8. The important bits by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some nutter uses a syringe (!) to inject your eyeballs with fish guts in his garage.

    Firstly, it's a glorified eye-dropper not a syringe.

    Secondly, it's an important biomedical advancement made by citizen scientists. (The important part of that sentence is "by citizen scientists".)

    Thirdly, there's an organization which is a nexus for citizen science.

    The important bit of this announcement, and the one that makes it interesting to me, is that people are making biomedical experiments on their own, bypassing regulatory agencies and big industry alike.

    This is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a stagnant market dominated by large monolithic entities. It's usually a small upstart company that's more agile than the big conglomerate, but it works the same in research as it does everywhere else.

    For a games-theory argument, consider that the regulatory agencies are free to require any safety requirements at no cost to themselves, but if something goes wrong they are held responsible. As a result we have a system where it costs 2.5 billion dollars to bring a drug to market, so that it's economically infeasable to implement existing cures for rare diseases. It's also impossible for individuals to manage their own risk with informed consent.

    For a games-theory argument, consider that health insurance companies see care and maintenance as a cost to be minimized and rates as profit to be maximized. As a result, insurance companies are unwilling to pay for newly minted procedures and therapies because "it's experimental".

    (As a concrete example, it tool a loooong time for the insurance companies to consider MRI scans non-experimental.)

    So it's not really *surprising* that people are taking things into their own hands and doing their own research, but it's an important development.

    Oh, and cue up the kneejerk response from established players about risk, gold-standard regulatory bureaucratic fandom, and how no one without a PhD can possibly do real research.

    1. Re:The important bits by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Secondly, it's an important biomedical advancement made by citizen scientists.

      Is it important, and is it even an advancement?

      They didn't come up with the idea and the effect was already known.

      Their idea was inspired by a patent filed in 2012, claiming that if you mix insulin, Ce6 and saline to someone’s eye, their retina absorbs much more light and they can see much better in the dark. The patent also mentioned that instead of insulin, you can use a substance called dimethlysulfoxide (DMSO). The Science for Masses guys thought “Why not use both?”.

      So their sole contribution appears to be the idea of using both insulin and DMSO (for no readily apparent reason and probably to no actual benefit).

      Thirdly, there's an organization [scienceforthemasses.org] which is a nexus for citizen science.

      Said "organization" appears to be two guys with unknown qualifications and "our fair share of body mod tools for when the mood strikes us." Their "paper" looks more like a blog post to me, and their "tests" were subjective at very best (something they do at least admit).

      I'd half expect their next "paper" to be a study on the effects of downing a glass of diet coke after eating a packet of mentos.

      The test subject's eyesight returned to normal the next day.

      Yeah, so far.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    2. Re:The important bits by chriscappuccio · · Score: 1

      ++

    3. Re:The important bits by nbauman · · Score: 2

      For a games-theory argument, consider that the regulatory agencies are free to require any safety requirements at no cost to themselves, but if something goes wrong they are held responsible. As a result we have a system where it costs 2.5 billion dollars to bring a drug to market, so that it's economically infeasable to implement existing cures for rare diseases. It's also impossible for individuals to manage their own risk with informed consent.

      (1) If you read a little further down that Google search, you find out that maybe it doesn't cost $2.5 billion after all.

      http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...
      $2.6 Billion to Develop a Drug? New Estimate Makes Questionable Assumptions
      Aaron E. Carroll
      NOV. 18, 2014
      The bottom line is that the report contains a lot of assumptions that tend to favor the pharmaceutical industry. While the Tufts Center reports that $2.6 billion is the cost to develop “a new prescription medicine that gains marketing approval,” it might be more accurate to say that it’s the cost to develop certain new molecular entities for which pharmaceutical companies did all of the research. That’s very few drugs, in the scheme of things.

      (2) Another game theory argument is that drug companies and doctors will sell drugs to make as much money as they can, even if they give people drugs that they don't need and it harms them. The Nobel-prize winning economist Kenneth Arrow wrote that a free market in health care is impossible, because the consumers (patients) don't have enough information to evaluate what the doctor is telling them.

      (3) Most scientists agree that theory should be confirmed with empirical fact. In fact, there are countries that until recently had almost no government regulation, and they bring new drugs to market all the time. Unfortunately, most of those new don't live up to their claims when western doctors try to use them. So their drugs aren't any good. Those facts disconfirm your theory.

      (4) In fact, without regulation, drug companies and doctors sell drugs with unfounded claims, and give patients drugs that are inappropriate and harmful, following their financial motivation rather than the interests of their patients. This confirms Arrow's theory.

      For example, China has relatively few government regulations.

      JAMA Intern Med. 2014 Dec;174(12):1914-20. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.5214.
      Use and prescription of antibiotics in primary health care settings in China.
      Wang J, Wang P, Wang X, Zheng Y, Xiao Y.

      RESULTS: Most staff in the primary health care facilities had less than a college degree, and the medical staff consisted primarily of physician assistants, assistant pharmacists, nurses, and nursing assistants. The median (range) governmental contribution to each facility was 34.0% (3.6%-92.5%) of total revenue. The facilities prescribed a median (range) of 28 (8-111) types of antibiotics, including 34 (10-115) individual agents. Antibiotics were included in 52.9% of the outpatient visit prescription records: of these, only 39.4% were prescribed properly. Of the inpatients, 77.5% received antibiotic therapy: of these, only 24.6% were prescribed properly. Antibiotics were prescribed for 78.0% of colds and 93.5% of cases of acute bronchitis. Of the antibiotic prescriptions, 28.0% contained cephalosporins and 15.7% fluoroquinolones. A total of 55.0% of the antibiotic prescriptions were for antibiotic combination therapy with 2 or more agents. In nonsurgical inpatients in cities, the mean (SD) duration of antibiotic therapy was 10.1 (7.8) days. Of the surgical patients, 98.0% received antibiotics, with 63.8% of these prescriptions for prophylaxis.

      CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Antibiotics are frequently prescribed in Chinese primary health care facil

    4. Re:The important bits by avandesande · · Score: 2

      DMSO is one of the most effective solvents known and makes the solution pass readily into the eyeball.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    5. Re:The important bits by jdavidb · · Score: 2

      Secondly, it's an important biomedical advancement made by citizen scientists. (The important part of that sentence is "by citizen scientists".)

      I was a little confused when I saw that wording in the story, and now that I'm hearing this wording is the important part, I'm getting a little concerned. Are we not all citizens? Have we been divided into citizens and ruling class, now?

      I'm all for popularizing science among all citizens, but I'd rather we word that as "science for the masses" or something.

      --
      Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
    6. Re:The important bits by BitterOak · · Score: 1

      Secondly, it's an important biomedical advancement made by citizen scientists. (The important part of that sentence is "by citizen scientists".)

      Why is that important? Are most scientists non-citizens? Or does that just mean they're citizens of the country where the work is done as opposed to citizens of some other country?

      --
      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
    7. Re:The important bits by gnunick · · Score: 2

      DMSO is one of the most effective solvents known and makes the solution pass readily into the eyeball.

      Yes, and absolutely everything else that it has been able to dissolve before it gets dropped into your eye also gets transported directly into your body.

      As you rightly point out, it is a very effective solvent. Inside or outside of the lab it's dangerous stuff. I've always marveled at the "health nuts" who think DMSO must be good for you because it makes you smell like garlic.

      --
      I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
    8. Re:The important bits by mysidia · · Score: 2

      DMSO is one of the most effective solvents known and makes the solution pass readily into the eyeball.

      Wait a minute... DMSO itself is a substance thought to be explicitly harmful to the eye.

      But there's a bigger problem.... it's too good a solvent... as in, exposure to Dmso can allow toxic materials to be absorbed through the skin that the skin would ordinarily protect against. Very dangerous stuff.

    9. Re:The important bits by ultranova · · Score: 2

      I was a little confused when I saw that wording in the story, and now that I'm hearing this wording is the important part, I'm getting a little concerned. Are we not all citizens? Have we been divided into citizens and ruling class, now?

      We've always been divided into serfs and lords. Human spirit simply doesn't have the strength to resist using power to get more. The lords, blinded by the seeming invincibility of their position and the system which grants it then end up draining that very system to the point of collapse and revolution, and the cycle repeats.

      Whether it can be broken is anyone's guess. Democracy has slowed and complicated the gravitational collapse of current system somewhat, but it couldn't alter the end result, since all manifestations of power in our societies are not under democratic control, and are thus free to join biggest existing masses of power and make them even bigger.

      I'm all for popularizing science among all citizens, but I'd rather we word that as "science for the masses" or something.

      That very desire should already answer your question. As our masters keep telling us: if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    10. Re:The important bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The important bit of this announcement, and the one that makes it interesting to me, is that people are making biomedical experiments on their own, bypassing regulatory agencies and big industry alike.

      From TFA:
      "To do so, team biochem researcher Gabriel Licina became a guinea pig."

      Having a spouse that works in this industry, the research is the easy part, getting it through the regulatory agencies is the hard (and expensive) part. If you use your own team members as test subjects you can easily bypass regulatory agencies in the early parts of the research phase.

      - Is this an interesting development? Yes - science is science.
      - Does this scale / can you do this every time? Not likely.
      - Can you commercialize a product with these methods? Absolutely not.

      I think big and small players alike would prefer lower costs to allow for more products to be released to market.

    11. Re:The important bits by pepty · · Score: 1
      OK, consider me cued up.

      This is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a stagnant market dominated by large monolithic entities. It's usually a small upstart company that's more agile than the big conglomerate, but it works the same in research as it does everywhere else.

      For a games-theory argument, consider that the regulatory agencies are free to require any safety requirements at no cost to themselves, but if something goes wrong they are held responsible. As a result we have a system where it costs 2.5 billion dollars [google.com] to bring a drug to market, so that it's economically infeasable to implement existing cures for rare diseases. It's also impossible for individuals to manage their own risk with informed consent.

      A few things to consider:

      1. Over a third of new drug approvals are for rare and orphan diseases (37% in the US last year). It is definitely economically feasible to create treatments for rare diseases.

      2. This paper doesn't describe anything that wasn't described in a patent from 2012. (Methods to enhance night vision and treatment of night blindness US 20120157377 A1)

      3. They aren't doing research to advance a treatment for a medical condition

    12. Re:The important bits by pepty · · Score: 1

      But if this was describing actual drug instead of a blogpost about a hobby, QC/QA protocols would be followed to ensure that only the intended active pharmaceutical ingredients and excipients are in the dose, and that the method of administration doesn't introduce any contaminants.

      Anyway, if you want to hear something even scarier: you can treat Alzheimers in mice by repeatedly permeabilizing the blood brain barrier for a few hours. How's that for potential of letting nasty stuff into the wrong place?

      http://www.sciguru.org/newsite...

    13. Re:The important bits by pepty · · Score: 1

      If you use your own team members as test subjects you can easily bypass regulatory agencies in the early parts of the research phase.

      So long as you don't actually tell anyone outside of your research group about those experiments, and then lie to your insurance companies about what happened if there is an accident.

      the research is the easy part, getting it through the regulatory agencies is the hard (and expensive) part.

      For most of the $, it's hard to separate the two. Yes the FDA requires successful phase III and sometimes phase IV trials, Aren't those research? The actual paperwork for the FDA submission costs millions to prepare, but that's chump change compared to the rest of the costs.

    14. Re:The important bits by mysidia · · Score: 2

      to ensure that only the intended active pharmaceutical ingredients and excipients are in the dose

      It goes beyond purity of the dose. If a person ingested some medicine containing DMSO as a delivery vector.... even if there were no contaminants in the dose, when the DMSO gets into the blood stream, it can dissolve things that are on the surface of the skin, which would not otherwise be a danger.

    15. Re:The important bits by dwye · · Score: 1

      Are we not all citizens?

      Yes, but some people are licensed professionals who would be sued if they recommended a treatment like this and it did not work out too well. These are not considered merely citizens.

      but I'd rather we word that as "science for the masses" or something.

      Thank you, but I would rather be a self-responsible citizen than one of millions of ant-like creatures to be ruled by a self-declared elite. Stalin ran the USSR for "the masses", no matter how many of them had to die for their own good.

    16. Re:The important bits by jdavidb · · Score: 1

      Thank you, but I would rather be a self-responsible citizen than one of millions of ant-like creatures to be ruled by a self-declared elite

      Isn't that what I was saying?

      --
      Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
  9. Where the hell can I get eyes like that? by Guerilla+Antix · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gotta kill a few people. Then you got to get sent to a slam, where they tell you you'll never see daylight again. You dig up a doctor, and you pay him 20 menthol Kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyeballs.

    Or here, use these eye drops.

    1. Re:Where the hell can I get eyes like that? by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      Of course he doesn't. He has more than 20 menthol Kools.

      Do they even allow cigarettes in prisons any more?

    2. Re:Where the hell can I get eyes like that? by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      many prisons in my state (IL) are selling e-cigs to inmates, the burning tabocco kind are banned

    3. Re:Where the hell can I get eyes like that? by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      Yes. Which seemingly serves the same supply and demand principle as outlawing liquor and meth... $125 for a package of Bugler tobacco at the County Shelter o' Trey Hots and a Cot.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    4. Re:Where the hell can I get eyes like that? by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      if what you suggest is true, tobacco smoking is still cut way down; lungs are healthier though shivvings might go up.

    5. Re:Where the hell can I get eyes like that? by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      Prison keeping is hard. Is it be better to have your skin parted with an improvised stabbing device or contract lung disease? Too many tough decisions...

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

  10. Re: What if you use it during the day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    But if you go to Walmart you will definitely go blind permanently

  11. Meaningless words and statistics FTW by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    view objects clearly in darkness up to 50 meters away.

    Define "darkness." It obviously wasn't completely dark. Was it dark like a moonless night dark, or dark like an interior hallway dark?

    Secondly, how do you define night vision in metres?

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Meaningless words and statistics FTW by gewalker · · Score: 2

      Easy, they were used to D&D where infravision is defined in terms of distance, which is of course bad physics, even for D&D.

      The article mentions they were able to detect humans up to 50 meters distant.

  12. Re:Aren't we all "citizens"? by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 1

    Soulskill decides to use semi-trendy jargon in a headline, and you think it's some kind of admission from the establishment that they control the horizontal and the vertical? There's a hole in your hat. Take some of this -- it's Bacofoil. Quality stuff.

    --
    Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  13. Re:How do I get eyes like that by Razed+By+TV · · Score: 1
    The test subject just has "sclera lenses" in his eyes, this procedure doesn't turn his eyes black.

    This is me with protective lenses in my eyes to block out some of the light. As the solution starts to work, the light intensity would increase over the course of 2 hours. I ended up putting sunglasses on soon as well.

    I'm a little skeptical that a sclera lens will even be effective for protecting your eyes in a situation like this.

    I'm also a little surprised that their research doesn't mention anything about pupil dilation, whether it is normal or otherwise.

  14. eh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I will take a night vision scope over this, any day.

  15. Is ... by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    April 1st this year 3 days early?

  16. Re:How do I get eyes like that by X0563511 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What I don't understand is why they did this to both of his eyes.

    You'd think it would be far more prudent to dose one eye, and put a patch over the untreated eye to prevent interference.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  17. "I can still see!" by FrnkMit · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Did no one learn from Ray Milland in _The Man with the X-Ray Eyes_?

  18. optigrab by spoot · · Score: 1

    oblig

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  19. Re:The Eyes of Ibad . . . by rubycodez · · Score: 1

    sorry, we only have Honored Matres Whore Orange

  20. Side effects by Ukab+the+Great · · Score: 1

    May include one or more of the following:
    -- sleeping 20 hours or more daily
    -- hydrophobia
    -- sudden violent disposition to pieces of string
    -- self-licking of genitals
    -- tuna addiction
    -- sudden urges to defecate in your neighbors kid's sandox
    -- sexual activity lasting 60 seconds or less
    -- trying to gain the affections of friends and loved ones by bringing them dead rodents

  21. Re:What detail? by turbidostato · · Score: 1

    "The paper provides /very/ little quantitative detail with which to assess efficacy. This is not science."

    Oh, no, of course not. It is *citizen* science!

  22. Re:How do I get eyes like that by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not a patch, but having one eye as "control" wouldn't be a bad idea. If the subject had one "normal" eye and one "doped" one, you could make some kind of meaningful-ish comparison. The eye-patch would be a bad idea as the patched eye would be constantly adjusting to the darkness and would end up being "super-powered" itself by the time of the test.

    Actually, if the buy was wearing darkened contact lenses and sunglasses after treatment and before the test, and the "control" subjects weren't, the whole thing's basically just a waste of time, as we don't know how much of his improved accuracy over the others was down to the increased light-sensitivity as a result of blocking out light for several hours.

    --
    Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  23. Re:How do I get eyes like that by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 1

    I notice that the article does not give any actual specifications on how dark the test night was. It sounds like this gives someone a slight edge (100% vs 33% for the control group), so it won't replace technological night vision for a while at least.

    Or possibly even pirate night-vision, for that matter.

    Why did pirates wear eye-patches? Because an eye that receives no light adapts to the dark. After nightfall, they would take the patch off, and the patched eye would perform better than the eye that had been exposed to the glare of the sea all day. The "test subject" in this case wore darkened contact lenses and then stuck on a pair of sunglasses which he wore for a couple of hours before the test. By the time they went out to carry out the distance vision experiment, his eyes would have had longer to adjust to the dark than his companions, so his night vision would have been better than theirs anyway...

    --
    Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  24. Use for Presbyopia? by Angstroem · · Score: 1

    One thing that marks the onset of presbyopia is that your vision increasingly sucks as low/dim light conditions. If this stuff is without side effects, then this would make a neat (at least temporary) cure for early presbyopia, not requiring bright(est) lights for reading, soldering, etc.

  25. dusk is a thing by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    That's bunk. By the time it's fully dark (it doesn't go from full daylight to night in an instant) the eyes will have adapted anyway.

    It might protect you from temporarily losing the adaptation due to light exposure, i.e. a glimpse of a lantern or a gun flash but that's not the same thing at all.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  26. "My vision is augmented" by Tyrannicsupremacy · · Score: 1

    Had to have seen that coming.

    --
    http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png