light at the end of the tunnel for blind

[Lord Revan]

While I'm fairly young (33 when this was writen) I have quite sensitive eyes as in even taking eye drops is a chore as I essentially have to force my eyes to stay open, which could cause problems, so I'd rather not take the risk when glasses work just fine.

[Darmalus]

The only thing preventing me from getting surgery and being rid of my glasses is cost (poor student). I'd happily opt for better than normal vision if I could get it, assuming a favorable risk/reward balance.

In the end it all comes down to risk and reward, as the world advances the risks get smaller and the rewards sweeter.

[Enigma]

I have a cochlear implant in my right ear and it has given me a near normal level of hearing. Still a ways to go but the quality of sound is almost organic. Then again my brain already know what everything sounds like so my hearing improved dramatically once I received the sound processor. The voices sounded at first like Minnie Mouse through a synthesizer then eventually began to sound normal.

Downside is that I still have issues with phones (less so when on speaker phone) and listening to music is a hit or miss. Then again there are those with cochlear implants that can use phones and are able to listen to music.

If this new way to provide vision to the blind ends up working as well as cochlear implants, at best, it would be almost as good as the real thing.

[Grumman]

Oh, why stop at "equivalence with natural sight"?

Because, from a medical standpoint, enhancing sight past normal for healthy people would be unethical.

Whether that is true depends on how you parse that sentence: enhancing sight past normal (for healthy people) would be unethical; enhancing sight past (normal for healthy people) would not. If you're already installing a piece of hardware in someone's face to treat a disability, it's not unethical to use the one that's better than the original.

[Zeropoint]

While I recognize the ethical issues with unnecessary invasive surgeries that can potentially go wrong, those issues all seem to revolve around the likelihood of said complications actually occurring. If the process can be refined to the point where it's not particularly dangerous, and a patient grants fully informed consent to the procedure, I don't see how there are any ethical problems with eye upgrades in and of themselves.

To elaborate, we already allow surgery and implants for purely cosmetic purposes, and don't think of it as unethical, even though any surgical procedure carries risk of complications. Getting a facelift or tongue piercing or boob job could be disastrous or even fatal if things go really badly. Not long ago I had an earlobe trimmed because of a possibly cancerous spot, and had to sign a waiver indicating that I understood the possibility of complications up to and including death.

And yet, the surgeon had no qualms about snipping out the damaged portion of the earlobe and sewing it back together. Why should giving someone better eyes be any different if the risks are similarly low?

[Jub]

Downside is that I still have issues with phones (less so when on speaker phone) and listening to music is a hit or miss. Then again there are those with cochlear implants that can use phones and are able to listen to music.

If this new way to provide vision to the blind ends up working as well as cochlear implants, at best, it would be almost as good as the real thing.

I wonder if the issue of phone calls and music could be solved by sending the signal directly to the implant for conversion rather than having the sound exit the phone's speaker and then stimulate the implant. This removes the issue of the quality of speaker affecting your ability to pick up the sound but does force the implant to have some add-on to grab these signals in the first place. I don't have such an implant, but do you think this would help with that problem and, if so, would you want to spend the extra money for this feature?

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While I recognize the ethical issues with unnecessary invasive surgeries that can potentially go wrong, those issues all seem to revolve around the likelihood of said complications actually occurring. If the process can be refined to the point where it's not particularly dangerous, and a patient grants fully informed consent to the procedure, I don't see how there are any ethical problems with eye upgrades in and of themselves.

To elaborate, we already allow surgery and implants for purely cosmetic purposes, and don't think of it as unethical, even though any surgical procedure carries risk of complications. Getting a facelift or tongue piercing or boob job could be disastrous or even fatal if things go really badly. Not long ago I had an earlobe trimmed because of a possibly cancerous spot, and had to sign a waiver indicating that I understood the possibility of complications up to and including death.

And yet, the surgeon had no qualms about snipping out the damaged portion of the earlobe and sewing it back together. Why should giving someone better eyes be any different if the risks are similarly low?

This is how I feel about bionic implants. If we get to a place where a surgery can give better than baseline results with some, acceptable to the patient, level of risk, I don't see why we should put a stop to that. Any more than we should stop a person with 20/20 vision from trying to get better than 20/20 vision via LASIK.

[Jub]

[Delete me]

[Enigma]

Downside is that I still have issues with phones (less so when on speaker phone) and listening to music is a hit or miss. Then again there are those with cochlear implants that can use phones and are able to listen to music.

If this new way to provide vision to the blind ends up working as well as cochlear implants, at best, it would be almost as good as the real thing.

I wonder if the issue of phone calls and music could be solved by sending the signal directly to the implant for conversion rather than having the sound exit the phone's speaker and then stimulate the implant. This removes the issue of the quality of speaker affecting your ability to pick up the sound but does force the implant to have some add-on to grab these signals in the first place. I don't have such an implant, but do you think this would help with that problem and, if so, would you want to spend the extra money for this feature?

Nope, not really. I use a "mini mike" that is plugged into the headphone jack on my PC's speaker. When I have it turned on, any sounds would go through the mini mike and is directly transmitted into the sound processor. I can hear movies fairly well, but music is a hit or miss. I have something similar for my phone. It is a "phone clip". It's a blue tooth device that pretty much does the same thing as the mini mike but for cell phones. It didn't work so well with my old phone and admittedly I haven't tried it with my new smartphone.

But there are some people that have cochlear implants and are able to hear music though it would not sound completely the same as a person with normal hearing.

[Jub]

Nope, not really. I use a "mini mike" that is plugged into the headphone jack on my PC's speaker. When I have it turned on, any sounds would go through the mini mike and is directly transmitted into the sound processor. I can hear movies fairly well, but music is a hit or miss. I have something similar for my phone. It is a "phone clip". It's a blue tooth device that pretty much does the same thing as the mini mike but for cell phones. It didn't work so well with my old phone and admittedly I haven't tried it with my new smartphone.

But there are some people that have cochlear implants and are able to hear music though it would not sound completely the same as a person with normal hearing.

Thanks for clearing that up. I wasn't sure if the issue was with the quality of sounding being output being compounded by the cochlear implants limitations, or just a basic limitation of the implant itself. It sucks that there isn't a quick fix for these kinds of issues, but I guess the low hanging fruit is the first to be plucked.

[Broomstick]

It's not just an issue with the implant - the implant has to work with what nerves the patient has left. That can certainly affect what is possible to achieve with a CI, and is why there is such variance in end results.

It's going to be awhile before we have artificial retinas even as good as current CI's. It will be even longer before they become ethical for use in patients wanting to upgrade normal vision.

[Jub]

It's not just an issue with the implant - the implant has to work with what nerves the patient has left. That can certainly affect what is possible to achieve with a CI, and is why there is such variance in end results.

It's going to be awhile before we have artificial retinas even as good as current CI's. It will be even longer before they become ethical for use in patients wanting to upgrade normal vision.

I knew about the issues CIs can have with available nerves, time without hearing, brain plasticity, and other issues. I was more wondering about Enigma's case specifically.

I'm still not sure on your timeline with regards to implants. We've been advancing things rapidly for a while now, if we hit a snag and things don't stay on this breakneck pace I won't be surprised, I just think that scientific advances might come faster than we expect in the decades to come.

[His Divine Shadow]

Obviously technology will keep marching on and someday we'll reach and then go beyond natural as the technology and safety factor matures, it'll happen more likely than not given a long enough time scale.

How long is the interesting question. But impossible to predict, the only thing that seems safe to say is that advancement of human technology has been accelerating all the time. Some things also develop faster and into ways we couldn't imagine, while others never took off in the way we predicted them to in the past.