Re: Off-Topic: Article: A cure for blindness

['carol.pearso...@googlemail.com' via VIPhone]

----- Original Message -----
From: M. Taylor  <mk...@ucla.edu>
To:  viphone@googlegroups.com
CC: 
Date: Monday, 15 July 2019 1.21 am
Subject: Off-Topic:  Article:  A cure for blindness

>
>
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> A list member sent the following article to me requesting that it be posted
> to the group despite the fact that it is not related to any Apple products.
> 
> Now while I am definitely not going to make a habit of posting such
> off-topic material to the list, in this instance, because the prospects of
> the technology are so far reaching, and because our group, in addition to
> being an Apple technology resource, also serves as a kind of community, I
> have decided to post it to the group.
> 
> Now I know that some of you may take exception to my decision to post this
> article and if so, please contact me, off-list.  
> 
> Also, I request that there be no on-list replies to this thread.  It is
> informational, only.  It is not intended to be a conversation starter.
> 
> Thank you
> 
> Mark
> 
> A cure for blindness 
> By Ben Spencer 
> Daily Mail, Jul 12, 2019
>  
> A cure for blindness: Father, 35, who suddenly lost his sight aged nine is
> among six patients to have their vision restored by pioneering treatment
> that beams images directly into the brain 
> Doctors have restored sight to the blind by sending video images directly to
> the brain. 
> In a world-first that offers hope to millions of patients, five men and one
> woman have regained vision after years of 'living in the dark'. 
> They had electrode chips planted in the visual cortex at the back of their
> skulls that picked up images from a tiny video camera mounted in a pair of
> glasses. Their eyes were bypassed completely. 
> One of the participants, Benjamin James Spencer, who went blind aged nine,
> described his joy at seeing his wife and three daughters for the first time.
> 'It is awe inspiring to see so much beauty1' the 35-year-old told the Daily
> Mail last night. 'I could see the roundness of my wife's face, the shape of
> her body. 
> 'I could see my kids running up to give me a hug. It is not perfect vision -
> it is like grainy 1980s surveillance video footage. It may not be full
> vision yet, but it's something.' 
> Mr Spencer described how, when he was nine years old, his world went black. 
> 'It was September 18, 1992, a week after my birthday1' he said. 'I was at
> school leaving a class and in the time it took me to walk 50ft everything
> disappeared. 
> 'At first it started to go foggy and then a few paces later it was just
> dark. 
> 'I panicked and started screaming and kind of went into shock. Everything
> after that is pretty vague.' 
> In the coming days specialists at a hospital near his home in Texas broke
> the news that he would never see again. 
> 'I was told this was going to be my future. I was classed as lacking 100 per
> cent light perception. I was bl1' he said. 
> Mr Spencer had paediatric glaucoma, a rare condition caused by a defect in
> the eye's drainage system. 
> It had been incurable but scientists have now managed to bypass the broken
> link by sending images directly to the visual cortex, the part of the brain
> responsible for sight. 
> Mr Spencer lives in the city of Pearland, near Houston, with his wife
> Jeanette, 42, and daughters Abigail, 15, Melissa, 13, and Jane, ten. In
> April 2018, he became one of just six people to have a 60-electrode panel
> implanted in the back of his brain. 
> Surgeons at Baylor Medical College in Houston spent two hours cutting a
> window in his skull, placing the electrode array on the surface of the
> brain, and stitching it up again. They then spent six months 'mapping' his
> visual field. 
> This involved sending computer signals to the stimulation panel in his head
> to synchronise his brain to the real world--in effect teaching his visual
> cortex to process images again. 
> Eventually, in October, the device was wirelessly connected to a tiny video
> camera, mounted in a pair of glasses, and switched on. He saw his wife and
> three children for the very first time. 
> 'It was an incredible moment1' he told the Daily Mail. 'It was very
> humbling.' 
> Describing catching a glimpse of the sun through the window, he said: 'Such
> a tiny thing is normal for people who have vision. But I had not seen the
> sun since I was nine years old. I had felt its heat, but actually seeing it
> was incredible. After 25 and a half years of living in the dark, it is awe
> inspiring to see so much beauty.' 
> In January, after months of hospital testing, he was allowed to take the
> device home. The terms of the clinical trial means he can only switch it on
> for three hours a day, but he makes the most of it. 'I usually use it for 45
> minutes at a time and space it ou1' he said. 'If I want to go to the store
> or if one of my kids has a performance. 
> 'It is not perfect vision--it is like grainy 1980s surveillance video
> footage1' he said. 
> 'I can see silhouettes, I can see light and shade, I can guess at colours.
> It may not be full vision yet, but it's something. 
> 'I can go to the store, I can walk without my cane, I can sort my dark
> laundry from the whites, I can see a crack in the sidewalk coming up. I
> could see a sign sticking out--but I couldn't read what it sd.' 
> Even when completely blind, Mr Spencer learnt to thrive independently. 
> He finished school, went to college and earned a masters in business,
> focusing on international trade. He worked for a few years in import-export
> and then set up his own tax business. 
> 'I was determined to be an independent person1' he said. 'There is always a
> way around whatever the world throws at you. 
> 'Luckily I had people around me who said you can allow this to define you,
> or you can define life. But that being said, everything was a stepping
> stone. I learned that life was about adaptation.' 
> British experts described the breakthrough in the United States as a
> 'paradigm shift' in the treatment of the blind. 
> Patients who have benefited from the Orion wireless technology include those
> who have lost their sight due to glaucoma, trauma, infections, autoimmune
> diseases and nerve problems. 
> But the surgeons--from Baylor Medical College in Texas and the University
> of California Los Angeles--believe they can eventually help anyone who has
> lost their sight. They are unsure, however, whether it could help people
> born blind--because the visual cortex would never have learnt to process
> images. 
> They plan to implant 30 more devices over the next few months and if the
> results continue to be positive expect the technology to become widely
> available within three years. 
> Alex Shortt, a University College London lecturer and surgeon at Optegra Eye
> Hospital in the capital, said: 'This, to my mind, is a massive breakthrough,
> an amazing advance and it is very exciting. 
> 'Previously all attempts to create a "bionic eye" focused on implanting into
> the eye itself. It required you to have a working eye, a working optic
> nerve. 
> 'By bypassing the eye completely you open the potential up to many, many
> more people. 
> 'This is a complete paradigm shift for treating people with complete
> blindness. It is a real message of hope.' 
> He said the quality of the images would only improve. 
> Second Sight, the small American firm which makes the device, already has
> links in the UK thanks to another visual gadget trialled by the NHS. It
> plans to try to make Orion available here as soon as it is fully approved in
> the US. 
> Two million Britons have sight loss--360'000 of whom are registered as
> blind. These figures are set to double by 2050. 
> Another patient in the trial was able to tell apart the different balls on a
> pool table, picking out the cue ball from the striped balls and even picking
> out the blue ball. Others can walk around a block unaided, avoiding cars and
> pedestrians, and tell the curb from the road. 
> Scientists hope to radically improve the quality of the device. 
> The current prototype has 60 electrodes. The version they hope to use in
> their next trial will have 150--and in time this will go up. 
> Daniel Yoshor, the neurosurgeon at Baylor who implanted the device in Mr
> Spencer's brain, said: 'When you think of vision, you think of the eyes, but
> most of the work is being done in the brain. The impulses of light that are
> projected onto the retina are converted into neural signals that are
> transmitted along the optic nerve to parts of the brain.' 
> The Orion device works by replicating that process with a video camera. The
> electrodes stimulate spots in the visual field--the 'mind's eye'--which
> when working together create a black and white image that replicates the
> real world. Professor Yoshor said: 'If you imagine every spot in the visual
> field, the visual world, there's a corresponding part of the brain that
> represents that area, that spatial location. 
> 'If we stimulate someone's brain in a specific spot we will produce a
> perception of a spot of light corresponding to that map in the visual world.
> 
> 'The idea is if we cleverly stimulate the individual spots in the brain with
> electrodes we can actually reproduce visual form, like pixels on an LCD
> screen.' 
> He added: 'I tell these patients they're like astronauts flying to the Moon,
> they're taking bold steps to see not only if the device can help them as
> individuals, but if it can help the community of blind patients across the
> world.' 
> The results from the first six patients, presented at the World Society for
> Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery conference in New York a fortnight
> ago, revealed each patient had regained at least some degree of vision. 
> Second Sight is in negotiations with the FDA, the US health regulator, to
> launch another study in the coming months involving 30 patients. 
> Will McGuire, head of the firm, said: 'We expect at least two to three years
> until it is going to be available commercially. That will be down to
> negotiations with the FDA. Then we will start discussions with regulatory
> bodies outside the U.' 
> The Orion system is built on the success of an earlier device called the
> Argus II, which uses a similar camera to send images to an implant at the
> back of the eye, restoring sight to people who have started to lose their
> vision to common conditions such as age-related macular degeneration--or
> AMD. 
> It hit the headlines when it was unveiled at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital
> five years ago. 
> But it relied on a patient having at least some working retinal cells,
> stimulating them with the video images and sending the signal through the
> optic nerve to the brain. 
> The new system takes the concept a step further--bypassing the eye
> completely and sending the images directly to the brain. 
> This means anyone could benefit, even if their eyes are irreversibly damaged
> or missing altogether--such as those who have lost an eye in an accident or
> on the battlefield, or those who have become blinded by cancer, meningitis
> or sepsis. 
> Helen Lee, of the Royal National Institute of Blind People, said: 'We
> welcome this innovative technology which appears to have the potential to
> improve visual experience for blind people everywhere.
>  
> 
> 
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