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Neitz was quick to caution that “there’s a lot of steps before we actually cure a real blindness in people.” Except for the LCA trials, proposed gene therapies for blindness are still in animal-testing stages, if they’ve even progressed that far. The monkeys appear free of any side effects, but safety still needs to be proven. Williams, however, was quicker to speculate. “Ultimately we might be able to do all kinds of interesting manipulations of the retina,” he said. “Not only might we be able to cure disease, but we might engineer eyes with remarkable capabilities. You can imagine conferring enhanced night vision in normal eyes, or engineering genes that make photopigments with spectral properties for whatever you want your eye to see.” (via Gene Therapy Cures Color-Blind Monkeys | Wired Science | Wired.com
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