Stevie Wonder's restored vision?
Brettster
technique might restore his vision. At least, I think I read that. Haven't read
any follow-ups. Is there any chance at all that Wonder might get to see again
in his lifetime?
John Hatpin
Last I heard, Stevie was due to have a temporary retinal implant that
would give him very crude vision for about 15 minutes, so he could
"see" his family. This was a few years ago.
You've piqued my curiosity. Time for a Google - lessee ...
http://www.salon.com/health/log/1999/12/03/stevie_wonder/
Ah, that was back in 1999. A Johns Hopkins spokesperson said:
"... the procedure is designed mainly to benefit
patients who have lost their sight gradually to
degenerative diseases like macular degeneration,
and may not be useful at all to Wonder because
severe eye disease destroyed his sight at birth."
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,39333,00.html
"Who are retinal implants good for? As it turns out,
not Stevie Wonder. That's because his blindness is
not caused by a gradual breakdown of the retina,
but from complications at the time of his birth."
That's from nearly a year later, so it's not looking good.
Now, this one suggests that the whole thing was a bit of a media
frenzy over nothing:
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/2020_991217_steviewonder_feature_b.html
That describes an interview of Wonder by Barbara Walters of ABC News.
This exchange puts it in perspective:
WALTERS: Last month at a church in Detroit
you stunned the congregation by announcing,
I’m going to undergo an operation where the
unsighted can become sighted with the help
of some sort of chip, and everyone went wild,
and there has been so much publicity about it.
WONDER: I made a remark at the services
and it was just taken all the way to like - Stevie’s
gonna see!! He’s driving to get the operation
tomorrow! He’s in the car! He’s driving
himself! [SNAPS FINGERS ONCE] Can you
see him? He's moving!!![LAUGHS] OK.
Stevie's wonderful sense of humour comes to the fore when he says this
to the (white, blonde) Walters:
People always ask me, "If you could see someone,
do you think they would look as you thought they
would look?" And I said "yes" - I think I have a
pretty good, pretty vivid imagination, so I wouldn’t
be too far off. I mean, Barbara, I know that you’re
black.
All the other hits I looked at were talking in terms of Wonder
"considering" having the treatment. Nothing from after the event. It
seems that Stevie made an off-the-cuff remark. Retinal implants
wouldn't have helped him.
Incidentally, retinal implants only restore very limited sight. I had
in mind a 16x16 matrix, but didn't find anything to back that up.
There was one site that said something on the lines of being able to
make out the outlines of heads in a good light, but nothing more
detailed than that.
--
John Hatpin
Primum non nocere
Bob Ward
>-:I read a while back that Stevie Wonder was hopeful that some new operation or
>-:technique might restore his vision. At least, I think I read that. Haven't read
>-:any follow-ups. Is there any chance at all that Wonder might get to see again
>-:in his lifetime?
>-:
Since he never saw in the first place (he's been blind since birth)
it's doubtful he'll ever see *again*.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39333,00.html
Who are retinal implants good for?
As it turns out, not Stevie Wonder. That's because his blindness is
not caused by a gradual breakdown of the retina, but from
complications at the time of his
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/eyechip991207.html
Last week, Stevie Wonder said he was considering surgery to implant
the chip. Wonder, who has been blind since birth, spoke with Humayun,
who offered to examine the 49-year-old singer. Humayun said the
surgery is unlikely to help Wonder, but wouldn’t rule it out.
--
The time for action is past! NOW is the time for the senseless bickering
Larry Palletti
If so, there's going to be hell to pay when he finds out what they've
been doing to his hair.
--
Larry Palletti East Point/Atlanta, Georgia
www.palletti.com www.booksonscreen.com
Opinionated, but lovable
John Hatpin
>On 22 Sep 2002 19:28:22 GMT, bret...@aol.com (Brettster) wrote:
>
>>-:I read a while back that Stevie Wonder was hopeful that some new operation or
>>-:technique might restore his vision. At least, I think I read that. Haven't read
>>-:any follow-ups. Is there any chance at all that Wonder might get to see again
>>-:in his lifetime?
>
>Since he never saw in the first place (he's been blind since birth)
>it's doubtful he'll ever see *again*.
Was he really, literally blind from birth? Most websites say so
("Stevie Wonder, blind since birth, rose to fame when ..." sort of
thing).
A significant number say that he became blind within hours of birth.
Some cite retinitis pigmentosa (a heriditary disease), others say it's
a result of having too had much oxygen pumped into his incubator.
Since retinitis pigmentosa is one of the two main eye conditions that
retinal implants *can* address (the other is macular degeneration), it
looks like more of a mess of poor information than ever.
GrapeApe
For some reason, I was of the notion that Stevies blindness was a bit like Ray
Charles, it developed during early childhood for whatever reason, and might be
the type that could be cured with something along the lines of a corneal
transplant. Ray remembers colors and scenes from childhood, not sure about
Stevie (who became famous as a blind entertainer so young that his might have
developed much earlier)
The reason such a cure is usually not done is that there may be some serious
cognitive deficiencies in the vision system, due to the persons visual cortex
not ever getting a chance to properly develop. A perfect image could be
projected upon a working retina sending the proper signals through the optic
nerves, but the brain wouldn't know how to interpret the data.
Stevie is also a tech head... he might be willing to let someone place a
stimulating chip on his cerebral cortex and see what can be trained- a bit like
they are doing with some deafness now.
groo
There was an article in Wired just a few issues ago about progress being made in
this area. It described a fellow who had lost the vision in both eyes in separate
accidents who had implants that stimulated the brain to produce images. The process
described was pretty nifty. It didn't result in wonderful vision, but the guy was
able to do simple tasks based on the "visual" input. (It also described him going
into convulsions once when they were mapping out his brain.)
- groo
Harvey V
Google comes up with some news stories from December, 1999 about a
hoped-for operation, but the CNN story noted that it was experimental,
and that he hadn't approached the institute about it at that point.
Perhaps it never worked out, but was just a hoped-for experiment. The
links I found were
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/548343.stm
http://www.cnn.com/1999/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/03/stevie.wonder/
--
Cheers,
Harvey