AARP Bulletin: An End to Blindness?

An End to Blindness?

by Peter Jaret, AARP Bulletin, March 2015

If you had seen Lisa Kulik and her husband strolling the grounds of the University of Southern California’s Eye Institute last summer, you would have thought nothing of it. But for Kulik, that simple walk around the campus was “a miracle.” Blind for more than two decades from an inherited eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, Kulik was seeing again — clearly enough to make out the sidewalk and the grassy edge — thanks to a sophisticated microchip implanted in one of her eyes.

The device, called the Argus II, is just one of a growing number of bold new approaches to treating blindness, offering hope to the millions of mostly older Americans in danger of losing their sight from macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and other eye diseases. In fact, progress in ophthalmology is so rapid that some researchers have already begun to envision an end to many forms ofvision loss. “We still have a lot to learn,” admits Stephen Rose, chief research officer for the Foundation Fighting Blindness. “But it’s not a question of if we’ll end blindness. It’s really just a question of when.”

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This article was originally posted at https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2015/treating-blindness-vision-loss.1.html