Eye Transplant Enables Blind Boy to See 309
Chris Gondek points to this story carried by the Sydney Morning Herald, excerpting: "A one-year-old Pakistani boy saw the world for the first time yesterday through an eye donated by an Indian. Mohammed Ahmed gained partial vision after a difficult operation at the Agarwal Eye Institute in the southern city of Madras. Doctors said Ahmed, who was born blind, would get near-normal sight by the time he heads back to Karachi next week."
Reasons why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Reasons why? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Last year, a life-saving heart surgery was performed on two-year-old Pakistani girl Noor Fathima at a hospital in Bangalore, also in southern India. Since then a steady stream of Pakistani children has flocked to India seeking treatment for variety of ailments."
It may be that the Pakistanis will become increasingly dependant on India for medical care along with other social support services. This is increasingly likely as Pakistan remains fairly backwards and impoverished while India continues to modernize and grow in wealth.
If this trend does develop, and persist, Pakistan may be forced to improve its relationship with India for the express purpose of maintaining the availability of these services for its people.
Man wtf Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Specifics shmecifics (Score:4, Insightful)
True...Need more Funding. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think much more money should be spent in this kind of research. Immortality is just around the corner if successful brain transplants can take place. As well people inprisoned in quadriplegic bodies can be helped by this research along with many others with similiar neuron/motor neuron problems.
Re:Reasons why? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not completely ignorant, and I realise that there us such a thing as a Cashmere Conflict. That's what I find so disappointing about this world. People still hold archaic views about nationality and territory. People can have their lives taken or neglected simply because they live on the wrong side of an arbitrary line somewhere.
Re:True...Need more Funding. (Score:1, Insightful)
Hem... wait. There are a few things to debate on here.
Let's suppose that the brain is actually all someone is, and that body/brain compatibility is almost solved.
First, you should have a scientific way to determine a body/brain compatibility (not _that_ obvious). When you can get to see the way everyone deals with one's body today, I guess you already are in a dead end.
Second, whom body would you choose to be your next brain "bearer" ?
I mean, if you transplant someone's brain to make him live longer, there must be, somewhere, a body without a brain, that is, from which the brain has been removed/flushed.
Unless you are able to "grow" a working body without a brain.
Seems to me to be quite a dead end. Either technically, either ethically.
what a Hard Surgery... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Careful... (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt we'll see perfect transplants for a LONG time, but something that would "work" is not that far off.
Re:You're So Lost In Technical Details.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually there's never been a people-to-people problem between India and Pakistan: visitors from one country generally feel overwhelmed by the hospitality shown in the other. Indian films are hugely popular in Pakistan, Pakistani singers are hugely popular in India.
Last year, having spent a year (my first) in the US, I visited India for a few weeks. I had just left a country where the press was heaping the vilest and most unspeakably vulgar abuse on a historical ally, France, for daring to suggest that the Iraq war may not be necessary. The NYT had just run a story on how French high-school students, visiting the US on long-established exchange programmes, were not able to find American families willing to accommodate them (the same story also remarked, by the way, how Americans continued to be welcome in France -- something I can believe, I had lived two years in France before that.)
And I was now in my home country, India, where the papers were full of goodwill stories on the heart operation on a girl from the "enemy country", Pakistan, and the Pakistani parents were feeling overwhelmed by the good wishes they had received. (A few months ago, when the Indian cricket team toured Pakistan for the first time since the 1980s, Indian fans visiting Pakistan experienced similar hospitality.) This wasn't a surprise but it was hugely pleasant to see after a year watching Americans puke all over their oldest ally.
I had already decided that the US was not the country for me, but last year was when it crystallised: the US may be the most developed nation in the world but it's also the most immature in many ways: no other country uses the words "enemy" and "evil" so routinely and unthinkingly. I'm leaving for home in a few weeks.
Re:Careful... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:True...Need more Funding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Somewhat of a personal experience (Score:1, Insightful)
P.S. If you ever see someone moving his head from side to side, don't assume he's crazy - he might just be a monocular(?) person like me trying to judge depth.
Re:An "Ask Slashdot" for the vision scientist(s) (Score:1, Insightful)
Not unless time traverl were practical, too. The problem is that encoding often happens well before display. How do they know when they make the DVD what you (and all the people watching with you) will be looking at when you watch it? Once you get the DVD to your house, you might as well display everything, since the bandwidth available to you between the DVD player and the TV is huge.
Even if you're talking about point-to-point real-time video display, there are very few cases where the bandwidth is low enough to require heavy encoding and the latency is also low enough to allow the encoder to respond to eye movements quickly enough. The eye moves really quickly.
Re:True...Need more Funding. (Score:2, Insightful)