Posted on 09/17/2009 9:20:26 AM PDT by Clint Williams
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."
The dream of a color-blind society slips further away ...
LOL.
They should have set one eye to see blue and the other one to see red. Then the monkey could watch 3D movies without those silly glasses!
No need for color-guide dogs anymore.
Great news, now they can work on blindness caused by spanking the monkey.
This treatment will not be available to those on Obamacare. But they will offer to euthanize you.
That's great!
The dream of a color-blind MONKEY society slips further away ...
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