Posted on 02/22/2022 5:33:45 PM PST by Rummyfan
Barbara Campbell was walking through a New York City subway station during rush hour when her world abruptly went dark. For four years, Campbell had been using a high-tech implant in her left eye that gave her a crude kind of bionic vision, partially compensating for the genetic disease that had rendered her completely blind in her 30s. “I remember exactly where I was: I was switching from the 6 train to the F train,” Campbell tells IEEE Spectrum. “I was about to go down the stairs, and all of a sudden I heard a little ‘beep, beep, beep’ sound.”
It wasn’t her phone battery running out. It was her Argus II retinal implant system powering down. The patches of light and dark that she’d been able to see with the implant’s help vanished.
Terry Byland is the only person to have received this kind of implant in both eyes. He got the first-generation Argus I implant, made by the company Second Sight Medical Products, in his right eye in 2004 and the subsequent Argus II implant in his left 11 years later. He helped the company test the technology, spoke to the press movingly about his experiences, and even met Stevie Wonder at a conference. “[I] went from being just a person that was doing the testing to being a spokesman,” he remembers.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectrum.ieee.org ...
We can rebuild the eye; we have the technology.
Until the company closes its doors.
The batteries should have been the replaceable kind by off the shelf type batteries. .
“We can rebuild the eye; we have the technology.”
Only if you got $ 6 million
They can do this to everything that is computerized. Suddenly, your pacemaker will not work. Neither will your computer, your car, your smart meter, etc. Even entry to your home. They can hold your entire life hostage.
Who thinks it is a good idea to computerize your entire life?
Paging doctor Rudy Wells.
I hate it when that happens.
Obsolete and unsupported - they learned that from Microsoft so you have to go buy a new one whether you really need it or not 🤪
Who thinks it is a good idea to computerize your entire life
not my entire life but if it could make me see I would give it a go
Its far worse.
You know what you’ve lost.
This is one of the kind of real world issues never discussed about implants.
I could imagine Black Mirror incorporating this into an episode.
Black Mirror was great but they quit making them. I think they ran out of ideas.
I see you posted on Freerepublic.
I am afraid your social credit score does permit you to have a pacemaker.
Please leave or we will call security.
I remember reading about this years ago.
Sad the company went broke. I'm sure Covid didn't help. But who is counting those fatalities? I would not be too hard on this firm. I'm sure the owners and employees didn't want to get laid off or see their dreams washed down the drain. In many cases, you have folks that invested their lives in such ideas (30+ years of work)... Sometimes a situation is just shitty, but no one is at fault per say or malicious. Things just didn't work out: the way they went about it is cost prohibitive and surgically complex (my assessment), then you had Covid... Sometimes you have an idea but it's not until you run it down that you realize, this isn't “practically” going to work.
With bleeding edge tech like this, in small scale and experimental, the costs are often very high and early on the tech is sort of crude. It's unrealistic to expect someone to dream up and produce the perfect tech solution to such a complex problem straight up in the first try.
For those that regained vision, even though imperfect, and maybe not lasting, like you said, something is better than nothing. Also, in this case, those that did get this, they were pioneers from whom others in the future will benefit because even though this firm went broke and this product is discontinued, the tech doesn't really disappear.
There are too many blind people, there is too much money to be made... The key is that they need to come up with something where you can make money, which is profitable. I'm sure something will emerge.
EXACTLY! And, don’t get me started on the “Cloud”
Four-hundred years from now we will have visors, just like Geordie LaForge.
I can tell you from experience that losing sight even in one eye is horrible.
I woke up one morning thinking I had something in my right eye that would not come out. Went to the eye doctor that morning and she set up an appointment with a specialist. They wouldn’t see me for 2 weeks. All the time I was slowly losing my vision in that eye. Once he examined me he found that I had an eye stroke. No way to fix it they say. I can barely see in that eye, but certainly can’t read out of that eye.
It sucks because my other eye is trying to compensate and I am constantly feeling pressure. I have dreams believing I have gotten my sight back. On the other hand I also have dreams believing that I have lost sight in my other eye as well. If they could fix it I would pay whatever it cost. I would find the money somewhere. It’s crazy because 2 guys I work with have also lost complete vision in one eye.
I had a retinal blowout in the left eye a year ago. It was caused by shrapnel left in there in 1972. It just broke loose and floated around like a knife.
The doctors reattached the retina and did a vitrectomy (removal of the vitreous humor and replacing it with saline). Since then I have had 5 more surgeries on the eye. I have spent to year with vision ranging from nothing to 20/400 vision.
The brain and other eye have compensated enough to let me drive legally. The big change was losing depth perception and learning how to gauge distances again.
The answer to your question is mixed. I know what I am missing. I know what I have left.
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