By Rhonda Campbell
You don’t have to have lost total ability to see in order to be blind. In fact, the National Federation of the Blind says that blindness exist if a person’s “sight is bad enough—even with corrective lenses—that they must use alternative methods to engage in any activity that persons with normal vision would do using their eyes.” The government takes a different approach, stating that to be legally blind, a person’s vision must be “20/200 or less in the better eye with the best possible correction or that the visual field must be 20 degrees or less.”
Keeping more people from becoming legally blind
As of 2011, approximately 6,636,900 children and adults fit the description of having some level of blindness. For years, corrective lenses served as the answer to blindness. For children and adults with total blindness, those options come up short. These people may place their hope in scientific discovers like recent gene therapy research and developments.
BBC News Health reports that, “Surgeons in Oxford have used a gene therapy technique to improve the vision of six patients who would otherwise have gone blind.” Physicians who performed the operation are hopeful that the surgery will help to treat common types of blindness.
During the operation, a gene was inserted into the affected eye of Jonathan Wyatt, the patient who was operated. Professors like Robert MacLean shared that they were very pleased with the result of the surgery. The condition that impaired Wyatt’s vision is called choroideremia. Because of this condition, cells at the back of the eye that detect light die.
Prior to the operation, Wyatt was able to see partially. Yet, waiting to get the surgery may have made that experience less likely. Rather than to be able to see perfectly, Jonathan Wyatt wanted to stop the decline of his vision. He received the results he wanted, perhaps more.
As BBC News Health shares, “He, like another patient in Professor MacLaren’s trial, found that not only did the operation stabilise his vision – it improved it. The other subjects, who were at earlier stages in their vision, experienced improvements in their ability to see at night.” Because of the surgery, Jonathan Wyatt no longer fears that he may go blind.
