Gene Therapy Cures Color-Blind Monkeys 197
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."
Colors - for the first time (Score:4, Funny)
Re:biotech rocks (Score:5, Funny)
This is great! (Score:4, Funny)
Now all those poor monkeys will finally be able to get unrestricted pilot licenses!
Programming Implications (Score:3, Funny)
This definitely has programming implications for me. If you ever have had to design web pages for a superior with color blindness, and they insist on choosing or refusing the colors you want to use, you know the programming problems that color blindness can cause.
"This page looks best after gene therapy" - hmm, I like it.
Yo Gene Therapy, I'm really happy for you (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Colors - for the first time (Score:4, Funny)
Given those results, I say we give the human trials a green light!
Re:Impossible to imagine (Score:3, Funny)
It's nice to see someone else that thinks the color purple is a conspiracy that all the "normal" vision carry out on us. I can't tell you how many "purple" shirts my daughter has convinced me to buy. There is no such thing as "purple" it's all a conspiracy.
Re:Impossible to imagine (Score:3, Funny)
I suppose for us color-enabled people, an analogy might be trying to comprehend what it feels like to have a vagina.
Then again, for slashdot, merely what it's like to touch one :-)
Re:Colors - for the first time (Score:3, Funny)
Given those results, I say we give the human trials a green light!
Just make sure the people running it aren't red/green colorblind.