Scientists discover genetic cure for red-green colour blindness

Scientists discover genetic cure for red-green colour blindness

www.timesonline.co.uk

Genetic scientists have discovered a cure for colour blindness, offering hope to millions of sufferers.

Scientists at the University of Washington, in Seattle, and the University of Florida restored normal vision to two colour-blind monkeys. The technique could prove to be a safe and effective cure for colour blindness and other visual disorders related to the cones in the retina.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is pretty big news, since it was long believed that color blindness was an incurable affliction. It's obviously still at an early phase, but eventually this could lead to procedures on humans to reverse the effects of color blindess. As someone who has red-green color blindness, this is sort of exciting. Maybe someday I'll actually see shades of green like a normal person!

As an interesting side note, I didn't know I was color blind until I was 18 years old. They made the Ishihara color blindness test and I missed more than half of them. My parents swore that I was tested as a child and passed, so I'm not sure what that's all about.

Either way, exciting news!

www.timesonline.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by paradigm619


That is exciting news. My husband is also red-green colorblind. I try to remember what he sees as the color I see and we compare notes to see if we are talking about the same thing. He sees color, just not the shades most of us commonly recognize as "similar".

I believe (intuitively, I have no facts) that each of us see color uniquely and have a very hard time agreeing on the correct label for each shade, tone and color.

That's amazing! O_O My best bud is red green color blind... He is going to be very excited about this.

"scientists restored normal vision to the monkeys by injecting a virus modified to contain the L opsin gene into the retina. Over 24 weeks the light sensitivity of the cones infected with the virus shifted towards the red part of the spectrum. Then the monkeys easily distinguished the patterns of grey, green and red dots. "

That's just really cool that we can do that... What next!?

how the heck do you test monkeys for color blindness? its not like they can say what they see.

Interesting. I would like to add that daltonism is a genetic problem related to the Y gene (or male gene), that is why women cannot be color blind.

Although the article states that 0.5% of caucasian women are color blind, I highly doubt that the source of their color blindness is the same as that shown in men (8% in caucasian males).

reply to post by paradigm619


Awesome news for my friend. He gets frustrated with video games which do not have color-blind-friendly options.

Most embarrassing moment for him was when he thought a HOT pink building was actually blue. We plan to buy him hot pink shirts as presents and see if he wears them without knowing.