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Women in the Highlands region of Papua New Guinea have higher rates of blindness than in other parts of the country.

A hut in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Photo: RNZ / Johnny Blades

This was revealed by the President of PNG's Prevention of Blindness Committee at a launch of the World Health Organisation's global report on vision.

EMTV reports Dr Jambi Garap saying over 11 percent of women in the Highlands are faced with the prospect of blindness.

"It's like if we equated to the rest of the Pacific, it's like the countries of Nauru, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and maybe Samoa, all put together, all blind. That's how many of our people that are blind."

Dr Garap said the problem was exacerbated by a lack of specialist care, with only one eye doctor for every 800,000 people in PNG.

PNG has the highest rate of blindness and vision impairment in the Pacific - one in 18 adults over 50-years-old are blind, with women more likely to be blind than men.

Meanwhile, the committee has identified four major barriers impeding PNG people from getting treatment for blindness and vision impairment:

Read the original:
Women in PNG's Highlands more prone to blindness - RNZ

Donald Trumps position heading into Novembers presidential election is surprisingly strong. He remains personally unpopular, of course, but he heads toward reelection withfor nowa strong economy andfor nowno major foreign policy crisis.

Notice that I keep saying for now. Theres one glaring weakness that could bring Trump down hard, and were seeing it on full display in his reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak.

I am not just talking about the outbreak itself. Rather, I mean the authoritarian blindness that is driving Trumps erratic public statements on the outbreakbecause it indicates a more intractable problem with his way of thinking and making decisions.

Podcast March 16 2020

On today's 300th episode of the Bulwark Podcast, Tim Miller, Ben Parker, and Jim Swift join guest host Jonathan V. Last ...

What is authoritarian blindness? Its a term for the well-documented tendency of an authoritarian state to be unaware of what is happening in the world around it and unable to respond appropriately. The paradox of authoritarian regimes is that the more efficient and all-pervasive the surveillance state, the less it knows about what is going on. The regime becomes blinded because people are afraid to tell the truth.

A fascinating article by Zeynep Tufekci described how this phenomenon was a factor in the Chinese governments initial response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Because an authoritarian system is designed to suppress information, rather than absorb it, the doctors on the front lines who initially warned about the disease were ignored and sometimes punished: If people are too afraid to talk, and if punishing people for rumors becomes the norm, a doctor punished for spreading news of a disease in one province becomes just another day, rather than an indication of impending crisis.

Tufekci provides a great analogy:

An Orwellian surveillance-based system would be overwhelming and repressive, as it is now in China, but it would also be similar to losing sensation in parts of ones body due to nerve injuries. Without the pain to warn the brain, the hand stays on the hot stove, unaware of the damage to the flesh until its too late.

You can begin to see how this might apply to the Trump administration. No, we do not live under an authoritarian system, and there is no well-developed surveillance state or regime of censorship in America. But Donald Trump has developed and promoted two key concepts that produce much the same effect as authoritarian blindness: fake news and the deep state.

The point of the fake news concept is to describe information from any media not obsequiously friendly to the president as some kind of conspiracy intended to hurt him. Veteran reporter Lesley Stahl says Trump told her he uses the term to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.

The point of the deep state concept is to describe information coming to the president from within the federal bureaucracy as a partisan conspiracy to overthrow him by means of a coup. (Thats the presidents word, not mine.) Thus, some of Trumps prominent supporters dismissed a warning from a CDC official by spinning a conspiracy theory connecting her to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The practical effect of these two concepts is that they create a voluntarily accepted, self-induced authoritarian blindness, in which the administration and its circle of sycophants will accept no information from outside their bubble.

You can already see this blindness manifesting itself in the administrations muddled messages about COVID-19. As recently as Monday morning, Trump was still offering what one observer called the mayor from Jaws routine, exulting that COVID-19 is not that big a deal because so far its smaller than the regular fluas if this were the end of the outbreak and not the beginning.

Trump also dismissed concerns about the virus as a product of the Fake News Media trying to inflame the situation. This ties in to a view peddled by his supporters in the conservative media that COVID-19 is just the common cold and that the forces arrayed against Donald Trump are doing everything they can to weaponize this to harm the economy, to harm the stock market in hopes of harming President Trump. This last bit is from amateur epidemiologist Rush Limbaugh.

That is how Trump has been treating the outbreak, too: as more of a danger to the stock market and to his re-election than a danger to human lives. This is why his initial reaction was to send Larry Kudlow out to tell people to buy the dip in the stock market. (This also turned out not to be good investment advice.)

Then there is the way Trump spews misinformation about the virus and the governments response, while repeating in a self-satisfied tone his underlings real or imagined flattery. Every one of these doctors said, How do you know so much about this? Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.

His glib confidence that he understands complicated systems completely is the clearest sign that he hasnt got a clueand that everyone around him is too busy shoring up his fragile ego to tell him the truth.

Note particularly the closed information loop created by the presidents symbiosis with friendly news sources such as Fox News Channel, from which Trump regularly draws information on crucial issues. The president wont believe COVID-19 is a crisis until he sees it described that way on Fox & Friends or by Sean Hannityand they wont describe it that way if they think it will contradict the line coming from the White House.

COVID-19 is not quite a crisis yet. It is a situation that could grow into a full-blown crisis if the virus continues to spreadwhich it almost certainly will. Even more likely is the probability that local and federal officials will rally and undertake heroic measures to slow the spread of the virus regardless of what is going on in the White House.

But we dont really know yet, and Im not going to play armchair epidemiologist. While some of the reactions in the public sphere have bordered on panic, many people and institutions are making rational responses to uncertainty.

Regardless of the outcome of this outbreak, we have already seen the basic weakness of Trumps administration: its slowness and reluctance to respond to any information outside its bubble. If its not this crisis, it will be some other crisis: the economy, our disastrous capitulation to the Taliban, or just some ordinary back-and-forth during the campaign. Trump wont know hes losing independent voters until they are already lost, because the only people he listens to are those who tell him hes doing great and that all the voters think hes a very stable genius.

Theres a bitter irony here in the role the conservative press now plays. For years, conservatives warned that the leftward bias of the mainstream media actually hurt Democrats, because the press was telling them what they wanted to hear and this blinded them to unpleasant realities. This was even codified as the Taranto Principle: the presss failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the lefts bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans.

That was back when conservatives were still struggling to create their own alternative media in an attempt to break the left-wing information bubble. But as outlets like Fox gained large audiences and became the sole, automatically trusted news source for millions of voters, they created their own bubble. Trumps diatribes about fake news and the deep state have turned that bubble into an impenetrable bunker.

The result is that pro-Trump Republicans now suffer from their own Taranto effect, leaving them blissfully unaware how much the rest of the country doesnt like their man.

Read this article:
Trumps Authoritarian Blindness Comes Home to Roost - The Bulwark

There are different responses to unexpected hardship, and when Marion Sheppard began to go blind, she cycled through many of them.

She pitied herself and cried long and hard, because this wasnt right this wasnt fair. Her hearing had been severely impaired since early childhood and shed endured schoolyard teasing about that, so hadnt she paid her dues? Done her time?

She raged. Why me? she asked, many times. Its a clich, but for a reason. She really did want to know why shed been singled out.

She trembled. This was the end, wasnt it? Not of life, but of independence. Of freedom.

She spent months wrestling with those emotions, until she realized that they had pinned her in place. Time was marching on and she wasnt moving at all. Her choice was clear: She could surrender to the darkness, or she could dance.

She danced.

Thats what she was doing on a Monday morning a month and a half ago when I stopped by a Manhattan community center for blind people thats run by Visions, a nonprofit social services agency. Marion, 73, was leading her weekly line-dancing class.

She was teaching about a dozen students the steps to the electric slide and similar favorites. But, really, she was teaching them defiance. She was teaching them delight. She was teaching them not to shut down when life gives you cause to, not to underestimate yourself, not to retreat. Shed briefly done all of that, and it was a waste.

Ladies and gentlemen, I need your attention, please! she shouted over the music. Most of her students are people over 60 whose eyesight deteriorated when they were already adults and who can remember different, easier times. She told them: Just because we cant see well, we can still do things, and one of those things is dance. Her chin was high, her shoulders pulled back and her chest pushed forward. Thats how she approaches the world now: ebulliently. Emphatically.

Weve got to keep moving, she continued. You know why? Because were alive! As long as were alive, we have to keep moving.

I met Marion because, as Ive described in previous columns, Ive had my own brush with blindness or at least with the specter of it. The vision in my right eye was severely and irreversibly diminished about two and a half years ago, by a condition that puts me in danger of losing the vision in my left eye as well. Since then Ive educated myself about blindness, seeking out visually impaired people and the professionals who work with them.

I asked the executive director of Visions, Nancy Miller, about programs that upend assumptions about people with disabilities and that illustrate their tenacity, optimism, resilience.

My dance instructor is deaf and blind and in her 70s, she said.

Your dance instructor? I responded. That didnt fit my ignorant vision of Visions.

I dropped in on Marions class. Her students are devoted regulars, and while Marion cant make out their faces, she knows them by their shapes and their voices, which her hearing aids render sufficiently audible.

She calls many of them baby or sweetheart. As best I can tell, she calls most everybody baby or sweetheart, a tic in tension with her big, brassy voice, which she uses in class to trumpet orders: To the right! To the left! Back it up! Tuuuuuuuurn! Cross a drill sergeant with a life coach, add a vocabulary heavy on the sorts of endearments stamped on heart-shaped candies and you get Marion.

She and her students have memorized the layout of the basement room in which the class is held, and she figures out which of her discs of music to load into the boom box by placing them under a machine, the Aladdin Ultra, that functions as a gigantic magnifying glass. It enlarges the letters on a discs case to a point where Marion can make them out. Blindness is a spectrum, and for many blind people, the world isnt all cloud; its just foggy enough to pose formidable challenges and force clever adaptations.

Marion uses her fingers to read the controls of the boom box. She uses her hands to determine if her students are moving as instructed. The students with more sight automatically help the ones with less, in accordance with an unspoken covenant.

Sometimes, though, someone just bluntly asks for assistance, as Marion did when fiddling with an attendance sheet. I need you for a second, she told a student standing nearby. I need your eyes. Can I borrow your eyes?

Marions own eyes were fine until she was in her 40s, she said, and began to experience episodes of scarily compromised vision. She got a diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive disease that usually shows up at an earlier age. For her, blindness was delayed, but it was coming all the same.

And it was hardly the first test of her strength. Marion didnt tally her misfortunes for me, but her daughter, Kokeda Sheppard, filled me in, to communicate how tough her mom is how indomitable. Marion, who has lived most of her life in the Bronx and still resides there, never really knew her father and was just 14 when her mother died, according to Kokeda. While relatives stepped in to help, Marion nonetheless functioned as a sort of parent to her younger siblings.

She got a college degree and, as it happens, worked for decades at The Times, though we didnt know each other. She was first a key punch operator and then a library clerk. She left about two decades ago. By then, her vision had degenerated badly.

Kokeda is her only child and remembers how hard Marion, who separated from Kokedas father, always worked to make sure that she didnt want for anything. Marion routinely drove nearly four hours from their apartment in the Bronx to the private boarding school in Pennsylvania that Kokeda attended and then made nine-hour road trips to visit Kokeda in college in Virginia.

My mom is one of the most reliable people Ive ever met in my life, said Kokeda, 47, who now lives in New Jersey. I think shes awesome, in case you havent gotten that. If I can be half the woman she is, Ill be OK.

It was partly because Marion was so active and proud of her autonomy that her failing vision devastated her at first. She felt powerless. Vulnerable. I was really terrified, she told me, and that terror was distilled into a recurring thought: Unable to see a strangers approach, shed be mugged.

She also couldnt shake the worry that people were going to look at me differently, act differently toward me, she said. And people do.

For a while, as her vision faded, she rarely left her apartment. But on one occasion when she did, attending a social event where she encountered other blind people, she was struck by how physically withdrawn they were, how still. I said, Oh, no, she recalled. This is the way my life is going to be? Oh, no.

She resolved not to be self-conscious, not about anything related to her blindness. She didnt merely make peace with the cane that she sometimes uses to walk; she made friends with it. I always said if I ever had a boy, Id name him Tyreek, and I never had a boy, so Tyreek is my cane, she said. Tyreek is my best friend.

Line dancing had long been a hobby of hers, and after she started going to events run by Visions and met Miller, she proposed a line-dancing class. Miller was agreeable, provided that Marion could attract a following.

Marion did, and she has maintained it over the past decade. She attributes that less to her music (Hot Hot Hot, Cupid Shuffle, Blurred Lines) than to her mission: Shes creating a rare environment outside their own homes where blind people can be physically uninhibited, where they can move through space not with caution but with joy. Isnt that the very essence of dance?

When you go blind, you lose your confidence, Marion said. What I want them to do is to have confidence.

And they do. They find it in the warmth of how she greets them, in her yelps of encouragement Owwwww! Yeah! Hit it! as they dip and turn. At the second of the two classes I watched, an 87-year-old student of hers told me that she was all nerves and hesitation before she started line dancing with Marion about two years ago. She shuffled everywhere. Now she sashays.

A 55-year-old student told me, This has revived me.

There was a moment in both classes when Marion instructed all of the participants, who were arranged in parallel lines, to form a circle instead. Then, one by one, each of them took a turn in the center, busting moves for his or her clapping, hooting, stomping peers.

Marion took a turn, too. She corkscrewed from a standing position to a crouch. She twisted this way and that. She was fearless. Even better than that, she was limitless.

The rest is here:
She Went Blind. Then She Danced. - The New York Times

A surprising relationship between air pollution and eye health has been uncovered by University College London researchers.

People living in cities with high pollution levels, like Philadelphia, have a 6% greater chance of developing glaucoma, a serious eye disease that can lead to blindness.

"Air pollution may cause inhaled particles to get into blood vessels," study co-author Paul Foster, a professor of glaucoma studies, told Men's Journal.

Those air particles travel into the nerves in the eyes, causing gradual damage to the retina. Higher particle concentration was associated with thinner macular ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer, which is a characteristic of glaucoma.

Blindness caused by glaucoma is irreversible. According to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, most people don't realize they have it until it is well advanced. There is no cure for glaucoma and early treatment is important to slow down the progression of the disease. That's why people need to know their risk factors.

Philadelphia continues to rank among the nation's 25 worst cities for ozone and year-round particle pollution. Every year, outdoor air pollution cuts the lives of about 100,000 U.S. residents short by a decade or two.

Last summer,an explosion and fire at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery produced the highest concentration of benzene, a dangerous chemical linked to cancer, among 114 U.S. refineries, according to an Environmental Integrity Project report.

So how can you better protect yourself? Try to avoid being outside for long periods of time during peak pollution hours. Make sure you have a good air filtration system in your home and that you change the filter frequently. Also, get regular eye checkups to monitor your health.

The study's findings were published in the journalInvestigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.

View original post here:
Air pollution increases the chance of going blind, study finds - PhillyVoice.com

Dr. Louise Hamill tells us more about the progress she has witnessed in the fight to control, and eventually eliminate, river blindness, and how this is a clear example of the impact the intensified efforts are having on neglected tropical diseases.

Louise Hamill 17 Mar 2020

A woman who is blind due to river blindness is led by her grandchild. Democratic Republic of Congo CBM

As Bug Bitten reported recently, January saw the first ever World Neclected Tropical Diseases Day a sign of just how far those working to control and eliminate neglected tropical diseases have come since the 2012 London Declaration on NTDs saw key players from across the world commit to tackling these ancient diseases.

Sightsavers in action. Source:Tommy Trenchard, Sightsavers

At Sightsavers I provide technical advice to Ministries of Health and local partners working to control and eventually eliminate river blindness (also known as onchocerciasis). The progress I have witnessed is a clear example of the impact the intensified efforts on NTDs are having.

River blindness is a parasitic infection spread by river-based flies. It causes severe skin irritation and can lead to irreversible blindness; yet its entirely preventable and treatable. If people who have the infection get timely access to the right medicine (called Mectizan) there will be no lasting impact on their skin or eyesight. If those who are at risk of infection take the drug one or two times a year over a prolonged period, they will also be protected.

Treatment using a measuring stick to work out dosage. Source: Moses Poiki

River blindness treatment now reaches record-breaking numbers, with 151.8 million people treated globally in 2018. One out of every four people who receive river blindness treatment do so through a Sightsavers-supported programme, and I have seen close-up the colossal, collaborative effort that is required to deliver treatment on such a huge scale. The right mechanisms now exist to ensure mass drug administration is successful, making the elimination of river blindness as a public health threat entirely feasible.

Progress is certainly impressive, but how did we get here?

The first steps to conquer river blindness were taken more than 20 years ago. In 1987, pharmaceutical company Merck & Co committed to donating river blindness treatment across the world for as long as it takes to eliminate the disease, through something that would eventually be known as the Mectizan Donation Programme.

Sightsavers, alongside national governments and other NGO partners, participated in multi-country research to develop the best method for providing treatment to communities on mass over a number of years. This resulted in something called the CDTi approach, which now forms the bedrock of river blindness control and elimination work.

Drugs used to cure and prevent river blindness. Source: Moses Opiki, Sightsavers

CDTi stands for community-directed treatment with ivermectin (another name for Mectizan) and it has been successful because it enables at-risk communities to distribute treatment at a time, using a method best suited to their circumstances. The CDTi approach works because it puts people in control of their own health, enabling those from at-risk communities to be instrumental in distributing and monitoring treatment. Because communities have ownership of the process, treatment distribution is more likely to continue and be effective, enabling progress to be sustained.

Community action. Source: Moses Opiki, Sightsavers

As the CDTi approach began to take off it became apparent there was a need to ensure mass drug administrations were well coordinated and best practice shared. Thats why, in 1991, the NGDO Coordination Group for the Control of Onchocerciasis was established to assist national programmes. Sightsavers was a founding member, and it was a proud day in 2013 when the groups name was changed the word control replaced with elimination , indicating just how far efforts have come in the 20 years since its inception.

In 2013, Colombia became the first country to be declared free of river blindness by the World Health Organization, followed by Ecuador in 2014, Mexico in 2015, and Guatemala in 2016.

Other countries are making important progress. Nigeria is home to around one quarter of all those at-risk of river blindness, and last year the government there announced the disease had been eliminated from Kaduna, Nassarawa and Plateau states, where 4.2 million people had previously been vulnerable.

Thanks to the high level of treatment coverage, it is has also become incredibly rare for new cases of vision loss caused by river blindness to occur.

Larvae of the Similiam blackfly, which transmits river blindness, are seen on reeds taken from the Agogo river in northern Uganda. Source: Moses Opiki, Sightsavers

A lot has been achieved in the last few decades, but more remains to be done. Currently, at least 217.5 million people are still at risk of contracting river blindness thats more than three times the population of the UK.

In 2019, WHO highlighted several priority areas that, if addressed, will help speed up elimination in countries where the disease remains endemic. One key area is to ensure all those in need of treatment are receiving it. To this end, we are supporting river blindness elimination mapping, working with partners in Ghana, Nigeria and Mozambique to determine whether areas that have not been offered treatment so far would benefit from it.

By responding to challenges such as these, and always working in partnership, the effort to reach more people with river blindness treatment will continue until all those affected have access to it.

Read the rest here:
How the global response to river blindness gained pace - BugBitten - BMC Blogs Network

Trump Derangement Syndrome is a helluva disease that has ravaged the nation and in at least one case caused hysterical blindness. Old white guy and author Stephen King tweeted out, "Note that Trump's coronavirus team is all male, all old, and all white," without noticing there were at least two women speaking, one of whom is Seema Verma, the daughter of first-generation immigrants from India. Verma is the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Actually, there were two. During another White House press briefing America's Surgeon General Jerome Adams stood with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. In case you can't tell, neither of them is white.

There is something really wrong with these people who are so hung up on the racial and gender makeup of the people on Trump's team. I don't care if they're aliens from Mars, I just want them to be the most qualified people in the room to handle a crisis. The left is so focused on diversity for diversity's sake that they would rather have a less qualified person in a position of authority because it makes them feel good about themselves. (Remember Joycelyn "teach the kids to masturbate" Elders?)

People who do this deserve to be roundly mocked. It is especially stupid that King is the one saying this considering he just got himself in a heap of trouble when he said writers should be judged solely on talent rather than on diversity. This tweet did not age well in comparison to his latest idiocy.

He was right back in January before the woke patrol made him apologize for being white and male, which he did with alarming speed. If it's important that only quality artists are given awards, how much more important is it to only hire the best crisis managers at a time of life and death in a pandemic? Spare us the virtue signaling for the benefit of your new friends, Stephen. The adults are solving problems right now.

Megan Fox is the author of Believe Evidence; The Death of Due Process from Salome to #MeToo, and host of The Fringe podcast. Follow on Twitter @MeganFoxW

Here is the original post:
Blindness: Stephen King Can't See Minorities on Trump Coronavirus Team - PJ Media

Llura Ambler Gund died on Sunday, March 15th at her home in Princeton, NJ. Lulie was born in Tampa, FL on February 14th, 1941 to Richard and Dorothy Liggett. She grew up in Thonotosassa, FL, attending St. Timothys and Bartram School. During high school and at the University of South Florida she pursued her love of acting all the way to New York where she met her future husband, Gordon Gund. They were married in 1966, having two children, Grant and Zack, and six grandchildren. After leaving Brooklyn, NY, they settled in Princeton, NJ near her sister and brother-in-law, Abigail and Tom Barrows and their two daughters, Katie and Anna.

In 1970, Gordon went blind from Retinitis Pigmentosa. Lulie was instrumental in helping him continue on and flourish in life and business. Together, they formed a special bond that would endure for more than 53 years and serve as a catalyst for success in charitable and business pursuits.

In 1971, Lulie and Gordon co-founded the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB), dedicated to finding treatments and cures for retinal degenerative diseases. In 1972 Lulie started and was President of the local Princeton chapter of FFB, the first in the nation, running it for 48 years. In recent years, there have been several major breakthroughs in treatments for blindness where FFB played a major role in funding research.

She was passionate about land conservation serving on the Nantucket Conservation Foundation board for many years and also helping to conserve farmland near her home in Princeton. In addition, Lulie spent 21 years as a Trustee and Vice president of the George Gund Foundation, serving communities in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.

She had a magnetic personality and was a wonderful judge of people. Lulie had a terrific sense of humor and loved to use it to make people smile and bring them together. As one friend said so eloquently, she made caring look like fun, and that to me is grace. Whether she was planning a small dinner or a large charity benefit, she had a gift for making events exciting and interesting.

Apart from spending time with friends and family, Lulie loved riding horses, Broadway shows, funny movies and fishing.

She is survived by her husband, Gordon; Sister, Abigail, two sons, Grant and Zack; two daughter in-laws Lara and Lindsey and six grandchildren, Lucy, Owen, Kelsey, Georgia, Colby and Gordie. She also had a host of extended family and friends whom she loved and cherished.

Details on a memorial service will be delayed until after the Corona Virus is under control. Should friends desire, memorial contributions may be made to the Foundation Fighting Blindness.

Read more:
Our Thoughts and Prayers are with Gordon Gund on the Passing of his Beloved Wife Lulie Gund - Cavs.com

Life during a global pandemic takes on a surreal quality. The ubiquitous presence of social media and a constant fire hose of coronavirus news can make it particularly hard if you're already feeling anxious.

So, we've put together a little round-up of recent science news that we find inspiring, encouraging, and worthy of note in these trying times.

In a world first, surgeons at Oregon Health & Science Institute have used the CRISPR gene-editing technique to attempt a cure for Leber congenital amaurosis, a rare genetic condition that causes blindness in early childhood.

While we await results on how this experiment worked out, this achievement joins a list of other medical uses of the technique, including the search for a Huntington's disease cure, herpes, HIV, and immunotherapy for some types of cancer.

Living at a time when medical researchers have this powerful tool at their disposal is certainly a good news item in our books.

In February, a huge stock of 60,000 seed samples was added to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault nestled inside a mountain in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, including the first-ever heirloom seed deposit by an indigenous US tribe.

Increasing deposits to this safehouse of crops reflect growing worldwide concern about potential loss of biodiversity and food security - but these actions also demonstrate a beautiful commitment to our future generations.

The virus strains that cause influenza are shapeshifters, constantly moving beyond our ability to immunise against them - hence, we need annual flu shots to stay ahead of the disease. A 'universal' flu vaccine would give us a huge advantage in this race, and there's now a truly promising candidate on the cards.

The vaccine, called FLU-v, has successfully passed phase I and phase II clinical trials, demonstrating its safety in human subjects; it's been found to induce immune responses that last at least six months. We can't wait to see the results of the next phase of trials.

A new type of contact lens could restore the colour spectrum limitations in people whose eyes struggle to tell apart green and red hues.

This brilliant technology already exists in some cleverly designed sunglasses; soon, people might also have access to it in the highly convenient form of contacts, thanks to a team of engineers at Tel Aviv University.

'Normal' image of a tree; colour blind version; corrected version. (Sharon Karepov/Tel Aviv University)

Researchers have announced that for the second time ever, a patient carrying the HIV virus has been declared cured, with no trace of infection in his blood 30 months after he stopped traditional treatment, undergoing a specialised type of stem cell therapy.

The achievement doesn't constitute a generalised cure, because the patient also had a type of lymphoma that enabled him to receive this experimental treatment; but it demonstrates a real breakthrough in medical science, showing scientists are able to push the boundaries like never before.

The tiny South Pacific nation of Niue recently accepted a unique honour, as it became the first country to be formally accredited as an International Dark Sky Place.

This accreditation is bestowed by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), a conservation non-profit charged with preserving the naturally dark night-time environment, defending it from the intrusive disturbances of artificial light pollution.

There's no end of scientific research charting the negative effects of light pollution, whether on animals, plants, or human health; this honour emphasises that seeking a truly dark night sky remains as important as ever.

Hydrogen fuel is one of the more promising zero-emissions options around - if only we could produce it cheaply and without needing insane amounts of energy input.

Now, a team of researchers in Tokyo have managed to do just that, refining a method that produces hydrogen fuel using just a few basic ingredients, including light and a particular type of rust. A new study shows this method yields 25 times more hydrogen than existing methods.

Speaking of sustainability, one of the biggest challenges to widespread adoption of renewables remains the problem of large-scale storage. However, there is one excellent solution to this problem - pumped thermal electricity storage. This approach stores electricity by turning it into heat, then turning it back into electricity when needed using an engine.

Unlike pumped hydro, which requires specific geographic requirements, this type of storage can be built in many places, and it uses thermodynamic principles to store electricity in the form of heat. And the best part? It's already being tested in pilot plants.

In June 2019, an odd paper made waves after it was published in Scientific Reports. The scientific community was quick to voice their concerns over this flawed study, which claimed that the Sun's movements were the real cause of anthropogenic global warming.

Now, the editors of the well-known journal have corrected the scientific record, issuing a retraction notice that explains the errors,showing that even if something incorrect initially slips through peer review, the scientific process is still rigorous enough to fix the mistake.You can read about this fascinating case in full here.

A new report by the non-profit Project Drawdown has outlined a whopping 76 solutions the world already has at hand if we want to slow down climate change. These strategies - from shifting our means of energy production, to reducing food waste and empowering women - span across all sectors.

Furthermore, these solutions are actually cheaper than maintaining the status quo (also known as 'doing nothing'). Project Drawdown estimates that if we implemented these 76 solutions, it would result in savings of up to around US$144 trillion of avoided climate damage and pollution-related healthcare costs. Tell everyone - we can do this.

Link:
Tired of The Coronavirus? Here Are 10 Good News Stories You Need Right Now - ScienceAlert

It would be nice, as America lurches into a coronavirus shutdown, to immerse in a simpler time say, maybe the late 1990s, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a place where keeping your lawn below six inches is seen as a pressing concern. In this idyllic suburb outside Cleveland, appearances are paramount, and talking politics taboo. Its not a far cry from the insular, subtext-laden Monterey of Big Little Lies, in which Reese Witherspoon navigated an all-star cast of highly competitive mothers for a greater, if troubled, cause of female solidarity amid domestic abuse.

Little Fires Everywhere, Hulus confident if ultimately limited adaptation of Celeste Ngs 2017 bestselling book (Ng also serves as producer and co-writer), will no doubt draw comparisons to Big Little Lies. Its also produced by and starring Witherspoon as sharp-eyed queen of a town with its own code of wealth and sanitized language determined to unravel a central, disturbing mystery though it doesnt have as much to say beyond a personal melodrama backlit by an impression of an archetypical wealthy American suburb.

The series, adapted for television by Liz Tigelaar, starts, like the book, with said mystery: Elena Richardson (Witherspoon) stands stricken on her lawn, watching her slate-roofed house go up in flames. Shes quintessential Shaker, a planner and image upholder, married to a defense attorney (Joshua Jackson) and the type to send her children (four kids in four years, all in high school) to school with letter-shaped pancakes and a directive for extracurriculars. Her three eldest, senior Lexie (Jade Pettyjohn), junior Trip (Jordan Elsass), and sophomore Moody (Gavin Lewis) suspect their youngest sister, black sheep Izzy (Megan Stott) of arson a hunch their mother refuses to accept. Shes likely to suspect the enigmatic tenant of her parents old duplex, nomadic artist Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) and her teenage daughter Pearl (Lexi Underwood).

The show backtracks four months to August 1997, and unspools the drama over eight hour-long episodes (seven of which were available for critics). In the waning days of summer, Elena battles with Izzy, who, unbeknownst to the family, is bullied at school for an unknown transgression. Elena rents to a reasonably wary Mia, who makes ends meet with cobbled together server jobs and artwork, and naive Pearl. Their presence sets off a chemical reaction between the two families: Pearl entrances Moody with her quiet intelligence, but is attracted to Trip; Lexie magnetizes Pearl with her thoughtless popularity; Mia draws in Izzy with her nomadic artist life, a rejection of all things Shaker; Mia and Elena fascinate and repulse each other Mia wheedles into the Richardson fray to protect their daughter, while Elena, her journalism career thwarted by children, investigates Mias past.

The series sticks, for the most part, to the book, with one major difference: Mia and Pearl, whose race is not specified in the book, are black characters in the show, adding a fraught jolt to the polarity between the two families. The decision contrasts the mothers even more starkly, and illuminates the bold prejudice and self-righteous blindness of Shaker Heights and its ilk. Suddenly, Elenas offer for Mia to be her house manager has wider significance, as does Lexies use of Pearls story for a college application essay. Some of the Richardsons dinner table scenes read more as compendiums of various micro-aggressions than actual scene of people at dinner, but the point gets across.

But whereas the book traced the knotted threads connecting two families, especially its high school characters, the shows center of gravity is Mia and Elena their differences in worldview, race, and privilege, their fierce codes as mothers and eventual obsessive crusades against each other. Washington and Witherspoon anchor such a fixation; their lines are heavy with sometimes clunky monologues but its a thrill to watch, for example, their uneasy tolerance, even understanding, evaporate in real time in a standout second episode scene (with wine, naturally). Their fault lines rupture further over an explosive parental rights case. Mia takes the side of her coworker at a Chinese restaurant, Bebe Chow (Lu Huang), an illegal immigrant who left her infant by a fire station in poverty-strained postpartum fog. Elena supports her infertile best friend Linda (Rosemarie Dewitt), who is finalizing the adoption of Bebes daughter and is desperate not to lose another child.

Both Mia and Elena insert themselves into the case intimately and insensibly, and the second half of the series diverts from Shaker into their pasts to justify why each woman responds to the case so intensely. Little Fires Everywhere becomes, ultimately, a referendum on motherhood filtered through middlebrow drama the choices mothers make, the worlds they do or do not provide, the secrets they keep, the control they want and increasingly cant have.

Like The Morning Show, yet another show produced and starring Witherspoon, Little Fires Everywhere throws a lot of fraught themes at the wall the myth of color-blindness, sexuality, motherhood, abortion, transracial adoption. Not all of them land, and the combination of so many in one series can sometimes feel chaotic, especially when some of the younger characters remain opaque. But its compulsively watchable, a portrait of two combustible women anchored by magnetic performances which, in these times, works in its favor.

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Little Fires Everywhere review Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington square off - The Guardian

This is a long watch of a poem, a tormented vigil. You want to ask, Whos there? a question you might, like the guard in Hamlets opening scene, call out in the dark. If loss is the subject, who is the loser? And what or who has been lost? These questions are not easily answered.

This is the latest volume in an extraordinarily rich period for David Harsent. In 2011, in Night, he made darkness visible. Fire Songs (2014) and Salt (2017) flared into apocalyptic view soon after. The subtitle of Loss is white nights, but do not expect any atoning dawns. The form of the new volume is painstaking: stretches of italics describe a figure looking through a window, writing on misty glass. He is a man in waiting. Sonnets alternate with trochaics and lead back to the frightening consciousness from which this fragmented narrative poem comes.

It is the permeability of Harsents writing that astonishes: global catastrophe, violent incident, mechanical threat all absorbed into the text. Yet the paradox is that he seems to be on the wrong side of the membrane of what matters to him. Women of the house he lay in the dark and listened to their voices Their talk was a constant, soft, overlapping,/under and over music, soft questions, soft laughter, diminuendo. It is their music not his. Repeatedly, womens hands appear, but their soft caresses do not soothe. Lovers are seen through a glass, darkly. Femininity and domesticity continue like a play on an unreachable stage, as though taking place in another world.

There are several references to hidden theatre, as if the stage should be sought (loss can, after all, be about what you never found). The poem is full of sinister commedia dellarte figures, and we even have a brush with a dramaturge of mood-swings. The wakeful man describes himself as a pilgrim a sinner. But this is no pilgrims progress, more a pilgrims stasis written at a febrile standstill. And there is a violence about the way Harsent makes apocalypse telegraphic:

the worst already with us

dogfight politics barrel-bombs

children scorched faceless

deluge and wildfire.

At one point, the man says: you feel you might/have outlived yourself. Harsents poem pulls off a strange feat, exploring the posthumous while staying painfully alive. It becomes an experiment with absence an exploration of what happens when you go missing to yourself.

He asks how it would be to be without what makes life worth living. Cityscapes and dreamscapes might release him but the city proves feral clashing bin lids, bold foxes, toxic streetlights. And his dreams taunt him, too. Art offers perspective, but he tests its limits, and poetrys too (there is a tension about the unspoken and its relationship to the unspeakable). He notes, write it down, a reminder of the small, plucky scale of artistic enterprise. The painters he returns to are Francis Bacon and Pierre Bonnard, as if to consider the distance and, less obviously, closeness between them.

He says forgiveness is waste and it is impossible to imagine less forgiving writing. It makes this volume a challenge to read. It is a compliment to its power that I longed to break free. The man in these poems is a figure in a landscape I fear might be ours. And while we might hanker after what Robert Lowell described as the sanity of self-deception, pricked and kicked by reckless caution, Harsent detects a sudden rise/in willing blindness among the best of us.

It is this blindness that Loss, with steadfast virtuosity, addresses.

Loss by David Harsent is published by Faber (14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over 15

There are forms gathered in the sky that he takes to be angels.He believes in angels as he once believed in unassailable virtue.There are voices that cant be accounted for. There are facesthat come and go. There is a fool let loose in his housewhich explains the breakage and wreckage, the faecal smell.There are rooms in his house that he has never seen.His heart went like a songbirds fast and light, morning delayednonetheless. He got up and walked about, a man in waiting.He sat down somewhere, a chill on the place. It seemed clearthere are rules that cannot be broken except by deaththere are slums out of which comes greatness that goes to wastethere are things that fall to hand but can never be keptthere are chance meetings that discover a turbulence of lovethere are maps that will take you to the edge of things.

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Poetry book of the month: Loss by David Harsent review - The Guardian

News Release

Friday, March 13, 2020

Finding may lead to novel therapeutic target for blinding disease.

A protein that normally deposits mineralized calcium in tooth enamel may also be responsible for calcium deposits in the back of the eye in people with dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), according to a study from researchers at the National Eye Institute (NEI). This protein, amelotin, may turn out to be a therapeutic target for the blinding disease. The findings were published in the journal Translational Research. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Using a simple cell culture model of retinal pigment epithelial cells, we were able to show that amelotin gets turned on by a certain kind of stress and causes formation of a particular kind of calcium deposit also seen in bones and teeth. When we looked in human donor eyes with dry AMD, we saw the same thing, said Graeme Wistow, Ph.D., chief of the NEI Section on Molecular Structure and Functional Genomics, and senior author of the study.

There are two forms of AMD wet and dry. While there are treatments that can slow the progression of wet AMD, there are currently no treatments for dry AMD, also called geographic atrophy. In dry AMD, deposits of cholesterol, lipids, proteins, and minerals accumulate at the back of the eye. Some of these deposits are called soft drusen and have a specific composition, different from deposits found in wet AMD. Drusen form under the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a layer of cells that transports nutrients from the blood vessels below to support the light-sensing photoreceptors of the retina above them. As the drusen develop, the RPE and eventually the photoreceptors die, leading to blindness. The photoreceptors cannot grow back, so the blindness is permanent.

Recently, researchers found a calcium-containing mineral compound called hydroxyapatite (HAP) in dry AMD deposits. HAP is a key component of tooth enamel and bone. Small balls of HAP filled with cholesterol, called spherules, were found only in drusen from people with dry AMD, and not in those with wet AMD or without AMD.

In this study, Wistows team discovered that if they starved RPE cells grown in transwells, a type of cell culture system, for nine days, the cells began to deposit HAP. They determined that the protein amelotin, encoded by the gene AMTN, is strongly upregulated after extended starvation and is responsible for the mineralization of HAP in their cell culture model. Blocking this pathway in their RPE cell line also blocked the production of these drusen-like deposits.

To verify that their cell culture model was accurately representing dry AMD, the researchers examined human cadaver eyes with dry AMD, wet AMD, or without AMD. They found HAP and amelotin only in the eyes with dry AMD, and not in the other eyes. While amelotin was found sometimes in areas of dry AMD without drusen, it was primarily present in soft drusen areas with large deposits of HAP.

Prior to this study, nobody really knew how the hydroxyapatite was accumulating in the dry AMD drusen, said Dinusha Rajapakse, Ph.D., the first author of the study. Finding this tooth-specific protein in the eye, this protein thats linked to hydroxyapatite deposition that was really unexpected.

Why RPE cells in dry AMD begin depositing these HAP spherules is unclear, but Wistow thinks it may be a protective mechanism gone awry. Its possible, he says, that these protein, lipid and mineral deposits may help damaged RPE cells block blood vessels from growing into the retina, a problem that is one of the key features of wet AMD. But when the mineral deposits get too extensive, they may also block nutrient flow to the RPE and photoreceptors, leading to retinal cell death.

Mechanistically, amelotin looks like a key player for the formation of these very specific hydroxyapatite spherules. Thats what it does in the teeth, and here it is in the back of the eye. Conceptually, you could see coming up with drugs that specifically block the function of amelotin in eye, and this might delay the progression of the disease. But we wont know until we try it, said Wistow.

Good animal models for testing dry AMD therapeutics are urgently needed. Based on the findings from this study, Wistow and his team are creating a new mouse model for the disease. Additionally, Wistow believes his cell culture model, which mimics features of dry AMD, could potentially be useful for high throughput drug screening to find molecules that slow or prevent the development of soft drusen.

RThis press release describes a basic research finding. Basic research increases our understanding of human behavior and biology, which is foundational to advancing new and better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Science is an unpredictable and incremental process each research advance builds on past discoveries, often in unexpected ways. Most clinical advances would not be possible without the knowledge of fundamental basic research.

NEI leads the federal governments research on the visual system and eye diseases. NEI supports basic and clinical science programs to develop sight-saving treatments and address special needs of people with vision loss. For more information, visit https://www.nei.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

NIHTurning Discovery Into Health

Rajapakse D, Peterson K, Mishra S, Fan J, Lerner J, Campos M, and Wistow G. Amelotin is expressed in retinal pigment epithelium and localizes to hydroxyapatite deposits in dry age-related macular degeneration. Translational Research. 2020. doi: 10.1016/j.trsl.2020.02.007

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NIH researchers discover tooth-enamel protein in eyes with dry AMD - National Institutes of Health

Marilynn Marchione, AP Chief Medical Writer Published 7:35 a.m. ET March 4, 2020 | Updated 1:46 p.m. ET March 4, 2020

Curious about your dog's family history, genes and medical risks? New DNA testing kits for pups will give you those answers. USA TODAY

Scientists say they have used the gene editing tool CRISPR inside someone's body for the first time, a new frontier for efforts to operate on DNA, the chemical code of life, to treat diseases.

A patient recently had it done at the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland for an inherited form of blindness, the companies that make the treatment announced Wednesday. They would not give details on the patient or when the surgery occurred.

It may take up to a month to see if it worked to restore vision. If the first few attempts seem safe, doctors plan to test it on 18 children and adults.

We literally have the potential to take people who are essentially blind and make them see, said Charles Albright, chief scientific officer at Editas Medicine, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company developing the treatment with Dublin-based Allergan. We think it could open up a whole new set of medicines to go in and change your DNA.

Charles Albright, executive vice president and chief scientific officer at Editas Medicine, a genome-editing company, in Cambridge, Mass., walks through the company's office on Jan. 8, 2020.(Photo: Rodrique Ngowi, AP)

Dr. Jason Comander, an eye surgeon at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston, another hospital that plans to enroll patients in the study, said it marks a new era in medicine using a technology that makes editing DNA much easier and much more effective.

Doctors first tried in-the-body gene editing in 2017 for a different inherited disease using a tool called zinc fingers. Many scientists believe CRISPR is a much easier tool for locating and cutting DNA at a specific spot, so interest in the new research is very high.

The people in this study have Leber congenital amaurosis, caused by a gene mutation that keeps the body from making a protein needed to convert light into signals to the brain, which enables sight. They're often born with little vision and can lose even that within a few years.

Scientists can't treat it with standard gene therapy supplying a replacement gene because the one needed is too big to fit inside the disabled viruses that are used to ferry it into cells.

So they're aiming to edit, or delete the mutation by making two cuts on either side of it. The hope is that the ends of DNA will reconnect and allow the gene to work as it should.

It's done in an hourlong surgery under general anesthesia. Through a tube the width of a hair, doctors drip three drops of fluid containing the gene editing machinery just beneath the retina, the lining at the back of the eye that contains the light-sensing cells.

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'Landmark study': More than 100 genes tied to autism identified in large study

"Once the cell is edited, its permanent and that cell will persist hopefully for the life of the patient," because these cells don't divide, said one study leader not involved in this first case, Dr. Eric Pierce at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.

Doctors think they need to fix a 10th to a third of the cells to restore vision. In animal tests, scientists were able to correct half of the cells with the treatment, Albright said.

The eye surgery itself poses little risk, doctors say. Infections and bleeding are relatively rare complications.

One of the biggest potential risks from gene editing is that CRISPR could make unintended changes in other genes, but the companies have done a lot to minimize that and to ensure that the treatment cuts only where it's intended to, Pierce said. He has consulted for Editas and helped test a gene therapy, Luxturna, that's sold for a different type of inherited blindness.

Some independent experts were optimistic about the new study.

The gene editing approach is really exciting. We need technology that will be able to deal with problems like these large genes, said Dr. Jean Bennett, a University of Pennsylvania researcher who helped test Luxturna at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia.

In one day, she had three calls from families seeking solutions to inherited blindness.

Its a terrible disease," she said. "Right now they have nothing.

Dr. Kiran Musunuru, another gene editing expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said the treatment seems likely to work, based on tests in human tissue, mice and monkeys.

The gene editing tool stays in the eye and does not travel to other parts of the body, so "if something goes wrong, the chance of harm is very small," he said. "It makes for a good first step for doing gene editing in the body.

Although the new study is the first to use CRISPR to edit a gene inside the body, another company, Sangamo Therapeutics, has been testing zinc finger gene editing to treat metabolic diseases.

Other scientists are using CRISPR to edit cells outside the body to try to treat cancer, sickle cell and some other diseases.

All of these studies have been done in the open, with government regulators' approval, unlike a Chinese scientist's work that brought international scorn in 2018. He Jiankui used CRISPR to edit embryos at the time of conception to try to make them resistant to infection with the AIDS virus. Changes to embryos' DNA can pass to future generations, unlike the work being done now in adults to treat diseases.

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Doctors altered a patient's DNA to treat blindness with controversial gene editing tool - USA TODAY

The book of Ecclesiastes has a funny thing to say about the future and its one of those blindly obvious statements, that if youre in the right mood, seems extremely funny. It goes like this: Ecclesiastes 8:7 If no one knows what will happen, who can tell him when it will happen?

You may be thinking, "Well duh, of course thats true! But as you meditate on the future, we see that no one knows what will happen from one second to the next. The recent worldwide volatility of the disease, stock market, and life in general teach us that even if we knew the future, we couldnt handle all that life was throwing at us anyway.

So, I figure rather than trying to avoid the blindness of the future we experience, we should try to embrace it.

We just hatched our second batch of baby chicks on the farm last week. The first time we had two chicks, this time we had three. But one of them had big giant eyeballs, they were sticking out as if she had hyperthyroidism.

My kids called them googley-eyes and that eventually the name was shortened and we just called her: Google. It became apparent after a few days that Google was blind. I had to put the water bowl almost completely in front of her face so she could find the water.

But after a while, she figured out where the dish was. Google had to rely on her sense of feel and smell to find water.

It seems like seasons of blindness of the future are really about how God puts us into a place where reliance upon ourselves doesnt work and we must rely on God to help us see whats right in from to us.

The future is a place no one on earth has ever been before, only God in his divine omniscience can see whats there as he stands at the end beckoning us toward himself.

Maybe the best way to embrace the blindness of the future is to realize that we are weak and frail and need to learn to rely on God more than anything else in this life. The characters of the Bible certainly didnt have things all figured out, a quick survey of their lives reveal that they didnt have it all together, rather their lives are testimonies of complete reliance on God.

Ultimately, we have to realize that Gods strength and power are only made perfect in our weakness.

Everything around us in life seems to be happening at light speed. This often causes us to become very impatient. Technology, the stock market, food prices, electric cars, everything is changing around us very fast.

However, God works not at the speed of light, but at the speed of seed planted in the ground. If you expect to see anything happen in the future of your life or the Kingdom of God, then you had better be planting seed in the ground now or you will for certain have nothing in the future.

This is what I mean by embracing the blindness of the future, we learn to embrace that God moves at the speed of seed. Ultimately, embracing blindness to the future is to wrap our arms around the moment as we put seed in the ground and trust God that he will bring about the fruit he and we desire most.

Where we are blind to the future, God is already there, embracing God is then embracing the future.

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Scott Bowman: Part one: Embracing the Blindness of the Future - State-Journal.com

Editas Medicine (NASDAQ:EDIT) and Allergan (NYSE:AGN) announced on Wednesday morning that they had just treated the first patient with Editas' flagship drug candidate EDIT-101 as part of the Brilliance phase 1/2 clinical trial. The new experimental gene-editing drug targets a rare eye disorder known as Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA).

What makes this particular treatment noteworthy is that it's the first time a patient's genes are being modified within the body, also known as anin vivotreatment.In comparison, most gene-editing drugs operate on an ex vivo basis, where targeted cells are removed from the patient first before they are modified and later returned. The trial will be testing 18 LCA patients to see how they respond to EDIT-101, which will be administered via a subretinal injection.

Image source: Getty Images.

"The first patient dosed in the BRILLIANCE clinical trial marks a significant milestone toward delivering on the promise and potential of CRISPR medicines to durably treat devastating diseases such as LCA10," said Cynthia Collins, CEO and president of Editas.

Leber congenital amaurosis is a type of blindness that first occurs in infants. Patients with the condition have mutations of specific genes responsible for the proper development of the retina, the part of the eye that detects light.

There's only one LCA treatment available right now, a pricey drug called Luxturna, which was developed by a now-bought-out biotech company calledSpark Therapeutics. However, the drug treats only a specific type of LCA, and it isn't available for most patients with the eye disorder.

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Editas and Allergan Make Gene-Editing History With First Treatment of Blindness Drug - The Motley Fool

MAYFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio

Theft: Mayfield Road

A Cleveland woman, 48, was charged with theft at Walmart Feb. 22 after she failed to ring $54 worth of merchandise at a self-checkout register. She explained that she was partially blind in one eye and was also distracted by a friend who was with her.

She was found to have an active felony warrant for grand theft out of Cuyahoga County and two misdemeanor warrants. She was subsequently taken to the county jail.

Theft: Golden Gate Plaza

A Cleveland woman, 36, was cited for theft at Marshalls Clothing Feb. 21 after trying to conceal a windbreaker jacket inside her clothing.

Lost property: Mayfield Ridge Road

An employee of an HVAC company reported Feb. 21 that he suspected his computer tablet had been stolen from his van or the front porch of a home. He had gone to the vacant home for work, but nobody was at the house. Officers were unable to determine where and when the tablet went missing.

Harassment: Mayfield Road

A Gates Mills Place resident reported Feb. 22 that she had received 21 phone calls in one day from a Cleveland woman, who threatened her and her child. She said her ex-boyfriend owes the woman money. Officers advised both women to have no further contact with each other.

Disturbance: SOM Center Road

Officers responded Feb. 23 to the Coppertree apartments for a report of four women fighting in a third-floor hallway. They learned that the incident began after an argument over the proper preparation of food.

The resident said one woman was his girlfriend and has anger issues. He asked that the Mayfield Heights woman, 21, leave the apartment, but she continued to be unruly and was subsequently charged with disorderly conduct.

Assault: Golden Gate Plaza

Two men got into fight behind the LaBarberia Institute of Hair Feb. 22 after one man confronted the other about derogatory social media posts he had made. The incident was not reported until Feb. 24, when surveillance video was reviewed.

The Mayfield Heights man, 23, and Garfield Heights man, 31, were students of the school and were expelled for the fight. They were both found to be equal participants in the fight. The incident was forwarded to the prosecutor for review and potential charges.

Theft: Mayfield Road

A Cleveland woman, 33, was cited for theft at Walmart Feb. 25 after she used a packet of taco seasoning to scan in place of several other items at a self-checkout register. Instead of paying full price for the items, she paid 73 cents each. The total value of the theft was $139.

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Woman blames theft on distraction and partial blindness: Mayfield Heights Police Blotter - cleveland.com

A first patient has been treated in a trial of an Allergan and Editas drug based on CRISPR/Cas9, a technology that allows genes to be manipulated inside the body.

The two companies claim AGN-151587 (EDIT-101) for Leber congenital amaurosis type 10 (LCA10) an inherited form of blindness is the first in vivo CRISPR medicine to be administered to a patient.

CRISPR, is a technology that can edit DNA at precise locations in the human genome, allowing genes to be permanently modified.

AGN-151587 was delivered as an injection under the retina of the eye of a patient at the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, US. It will take a few weeks to see if the procedure results in an improvement in vision.

Until now, CRISPR has been used in trials as an ex vivo technique to alter the expression of genes in cells in the lab, which can then be administered to patients as a cell therapy.

The first trial of that approach was conducted in China in 2016 and involved a cell-based therapy for lung cancer, and other studies have followed, including a study of CRISPR Therapeutics and Vertex Pharmas CRISPR ex vivo drug for blood disorders beta thalassaemia and sickle cell disease.

Allergan and Editas say they will test AGN-151587 in a few patients to begin with to see if the procedure is safe, in the phase 1/2 BRILLIANCE trial, and if so over the next few months will enrol 18 children and adults with LCA10, which has no approved treatments.

This dosing is a truly historic event for science, for medicine, and most importantly for people living with this eye disease, said Cynthia Collins, Editas chief executive.

LCA is a group of inherited retinal degenerative disorders that collectively are the most common cause of inherited childhood blindness, with an incidence of two to three per 100,000 live births worldwide.

LCA10 is caused by mutations in the CEP290 gene and accounts for approximately 2030% of all LCA cases.

Dosing into the eye is an easier prospect than systemic delivery via an infusion or pill, but still represents a step forward in the use of CRISPR as an in vivo therapeutic approach.

LCA10 is a good candidate for this type of drug as it cant be treated using other forms of gene therapy that rely on viruses to carry replacement genes, such as Spark Therapeutics Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec), which was approved in 2017 for forms of LCA associated with mutations in the RPE65 gene.

The CEP290 gene is too big to be carried by viral vectors, but using CRISPR its sequence can be edited to restore its normal function, by snipping out a small section.

Allergan licensed rights to Editas drug in 2018 on the strength of preclinical data, paying $15 million to exercise an option first acquired in 2017 for $90 million upfront, part of an alliance for up to five of Editas eye disease programmes.

Editas has also received another $25 million from Allergan under the deal tied to FDA approval to start the BRILLIANCE trial.

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First patient dosed in trial of Allergan/Editas' CRISPR blindness drug - - pharmaphorum

During the course of His ministry, Jesus performed more than 40 miracles, including healing the sick, changing the natural elements of nature and even raising people from the dead. A miracle is considered an event that occurs outside the bounds of natural law.

Each month, we will take a closer look at one of His miracles to understand the depth of His love for us. Understanding the miracles of Jesus can change your life, and it all begins with believing through faith.

In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the writers tell of Jesus healing a blind man. Of the many miraculous healings by Christ, it is unusual for the Gospel writers to name the people that were healed, but we can see here that the name of the blind man was revealedBartimaeus. There is much speculation on why Bartimaeus name was mentioned specifically during this miracle.

Biblical historians believe that Bartimaeus miraculous healing and conversion to Christianity was so incredible that it made a great impact on the people who witnessed and heard of it. Bartimaeus healing may have had a large influence and advanced the message of Christ after he was healed. His contribution could have been so significant that it compelled him to be named.

Bartimaeus was a blind man. He was poor, and his main source of income was from begging. Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was in his city, and as Jesus was leaving, Bartimaeus knew that this was his only chance to get healed. He had heard many wonderful things about Jesus, His teachings and His ability to heal the blind.

He went to the street and cried out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Then many warned him to be quiet, but he cried out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me!

If you were stranded on an island, wouldnt you shout from the top of your lungs if you saw a nearby ship? With this same desperation, Bartimaeus cried out to get the attention of Jesus. He thought Jesus didnt hear him at first and he cried out louder, Son of David, have mercy on me!

Now, theres the proof of his faith. He firmly believes that Jesus is the promised Messiah. He called Him the Son of David, a title that is only reserved for the promised and Anointed One.

Jesus said to him, Receive your sight; your faith has healed you, and immediately Bartimaeus received his sight and followed Jesus. When the large crowd of people saw this miracle, as they had known Bartimaeus to be blind for years, they immediately started praising Jesus.

Shouldnt we be like this blind man? Essentially, we have been all blindspiritually blind. We may have chosen the wrong paths and cant seem to find our way out. We may have felt hopeless. But, when we feel the darkness of our choices, we are reminded of our desire to learn of Gods way and to do His will.

This is the same situation where Bartimaeus found himself. This miracle is a reminder that our faith will remove our blindness and let us live fully in the light of Christ.

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The Mighty Miracles Of Jesus: Healing Bartimaeus Of Blindness - Osprey Observer

Prevent Blindness, Ohio Affiliate has declared March Workplace Eye Wellness Month.According to theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 2,000 U.S. workers a day sustain a job-related eye injury that requires medical treatment. About one-third of the injuries are treated in hospital emergency departments, and more than 100 of these injuries result in one or more days away from work.

For those who work outside an office setting, Prevent Blindness, Ohio Affiliate warns of common causes for eye injuries and urges everyone to wear the proper eye protection for risks that include:

Flying objects (bits of metal, glass);

Tools;

Particles;

Chemicals;

Harmful radiation; and

Any combination of these or other hazards.

The type of safety eye protection that Prevent Blindness recommends depends on the hazards in the workplace. For areas that have particles, flying objects, or dust, safety glasses with side protection (side shields) should be worn. Goggles should be worn for anyone working with chemicals. And, for those working near hazardous radiation (welding, lasers, or fiber optics) special-purpose safety glasses, goggles, face shields or helmets designed for that task should be worn.

Those who work within an office setting (working with computers and other digital devices) are at higher risk for digital eye strain. According to theAmerican Academy of Ophthalmology, eye strain symptoms include dry eyes, blurry vision, tearing or watery eyes, and headache.The cause ofdigital eye strain is that people blink less when they stare at digital devices. The AAO adds that normally, humans blink around 15 times per minutebut this blink rate can be cut in half when staring at screens or doing other near work activities (like reading).

Prevent Blindness recommends placing a digital screen 20 to 26 inches away from the eyes and slightly below eye level. Also, adjust lighting to lower glare and harsh reflections. More tips may be found at:https://www.preventblindness.org/computers-and-your-eyes.

Recognizing your eye health and safety needs within the workplace, and taking all the necessary steps to protect vision, can help us all to continue to protect healthy eyesight for years to come, said Sherry Williams, President & CEO of the Ohio Affiliate of Prevent Blindness.

The Prevent Blindness Committee of the Ohio Safety Congress will be presenting four eye health and safety educational workshops March 12 at its annual conference at the Columbus Convention Center. Morethan8,000representatives from Ohio businesses and government are expected to attend the Safety Congress which is thelargest and longest-running regional occupational safety, healthandworkers compensation eventin the United States.

For more information about workplace eye health, please call the Ohio Affiliate of Prevent Blindness,at 800-301-2020 or visithttps://www.preventblindness.org/eye-safety-work.

Founded in 1908, Prevent Blindness is the nation's leading volunteer eye health and safety organization dedicated to fighting blindness and saving sight.Focused on promoting a continuum of vision care, Prevent Blindness touches the lives of millions of people each year through public and professional education, advocacy, certified vision screening and training, community and patient service programs and research.These services are made possible through the generous support of the American public.Together with a network of affiliates, Prevent Blindness is committed to eliminating preventable blindness in America.For more information, or to contribute to the sight-saving fund, call 1-800-331-2020.Visit Prevent Blindness on the web atpbohio.org,Facebook atfacebook.com/pbohio or Twitter attwitter.com/PB_Ohio.

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March declared Workplace Eye Wellness Month by Prevent Blindness in effort to help protect employees' vision - The Highland County Press

NatGeo WILDs The Incredible Dr. Pol really is a remarkable vet. His show has a strong following because of his can-do, energetic attitude. Not much stumps the doc.

One of the very few limitations Dr. Pol has, he admits, is his color-blindness.

Arriving to the United States in 1961, Dr. Pol, like so many others, could not yet speak English. He met that challenge head-on. The 77-year-old just made himself learn it. Having his American wife, Diane, by his side made learning it even easier.

In his memoir, Never Turn Your Back on an Angus Cow, Dr. Pol described his first time on an airplane as he left the Netherlands to come to America.

Like most of my classmates, that was my first time on an airplane. While for many people the concept of going to live in America might be exciting or scary, the Dutch are pretty stoic; we tend to accept things as they happen without showing a great deal of emotion.

Dr. Pol took to his new homeland quickly and before he knew it, was speaking the local language just as swiftly.

It took eighteen hours to fly from Amsterdam to Detroit. We arrived in the middle of August. I spoke a passable British English. We were told that within three months, we would be dreaming in English, but for me, it was only two weeks.

Thirty years into his private practice in Weidman, Michigan, fame came calling at Dr. Pols doorstep.

His son, Charles, had been working in L.A., when he had the idea of developing a reality show around his veterinarian dad. Dr. Pol couldnt imagine who on earth would want to watch him stick his arm into cow after cow, but he went along with it.

Its an incredibly adaptable person -especially someone whos already been doing things a certain way for 30 years who will have an open mind to allowing cameras and chaos into their everyday lives.

I agreed to let his camera crew follow our staff for a few days, still wondering if anyone was going to watch. It turned out Diane and I raised a smart son, Dr. Pol writes in his book.

As stated, Dr. Pol is color blind, and particularly has trouble with the colors green and brown. He hasnt allowed this to slow him down in his work as it just requires confirmation from whoevers around him to help him with anything he might have trouble reading the color on.

He writes about this challenge, I have always had a hard time learning from books. Show me how something is done and Ill remember it. Show me a surgery one time and I can do it the next time. What made it even more difficult for me was the fact that Im color-blind. That made pathology especially hard. I couldnt make the diagnoses that were based on the color of the tissue.

In the clinic, then, the doc has one of the staff help him out with microscope slides.

. . . we now have a very good microscope with a camera on it, he wrote. But for me, there are things I cant do under a microscope because Im color-blind I have to get the slide ready and ask someone else to look at it for me.

Read more: The Incredible Dr. Pol: The Countries His Show Is Popular In May Surprise You

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'The Incredible Dr. Pol': Dr. Pol's Color-Blindness and How It Affects His Work - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

A HEREFORD medical student will be travelling 15,000 km on his motorcycle to help save the sight of people living in areas hardest hit by preventable blindness.

Hugo Jobst, who is studying at the University of St Andrews, is undertaking an eight month expedition on his motorcycle throughout India and Nepal to train midwives and nurses with the Arclight Ophthalmoscope, a life-changing diagnostic device.

Beginning in November 2020, Hugo will visit 35 institutions, and train over 1,000 midwives and nurses.

Developed at St Andrews in collaboration with Dr Andrew Blaikie, the Arclight is a solar powered diagnostic device used to examine the eyes and ears, accurately detecting diseases that cause blindness and deafness. Importantly, due to its durability and low production costs, it is designed to be accessible to low-resource areas.

According to The World Health Organisation, there are 250 million people living without sight, 40 percent of these in India alone. Of these people, 80 percent can be cured, but early detection is vital.

Hugo is being supported in his sight-saving quest by Hereford's BBR Optometry. Practice manager Daniel Read said: The fight against preventable blindness is an ongoing challenge. The people most affected are often the furthest away from appropriate care, but by travelling to rural areas and training and equipping workers, Hugo will be giving many more children the best chance at a fair start to life.

We wish Hugo all the best and cant wait to follow his journey.

Click here to read more about Hugos adventure and find out how to donate to this incredible cause here

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Medical student's epic journey to help fight preventable blindness - Hereford Times