Word: macula
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Ernest and surgeon Dr. Samir Patel performed a complex operation on Pearl Van Vliet, a retired medical-center receptionist who was suffering from the same condition that had deprived Ernest's father of his sight. That disease is known as age-related macular degeneration, in which the eye's macula, a remarkably sensitive structure in the middle of the retina, gradually loses its ability to distinguish shapes and colors...
...hopeful approach to macular degeneration. They first took cells from the retina of an aborted fetus, then surgically transplanted them into Van Vliet's severely impaired left eye. Since the operation, the transplanted cells have begun to proliferate, forming minute projections that stretch toward Van Vliet's macula. For Ernest, a large, affable man of 62, the weekly ritual of scrutinizing the eye scans that chronicle Van Vliet's recovery from surgery proved intensely satisfying, not only professionally but also because of his frustrating experience with his father, who died...
...sure, macular degeneration, which currently affects an estimated 10 million Americans, is not a fatal disorder. But it can be cruelly debilitating. For while the macula (named after the Latin word for spot) is no wider than a pencil, it is a hundred times more sensitive to small-scale features than the rest of the retina. Without a healthy macula, people cannot read a newspaper, recognize a friend, thread a needle, watch TV, safely negotiate stairs or see much of anything...
...grow. Then the researchers transplanted the spheres into the eyes of rabbits, positioning them just beneath the retina. The RPE cells did not stay put; instead they migrated throughout the eye. This suggested that it should be possible to position a transplant at a safe distance from the macula and still get therapeutic results...
...Dickson, the man organizing the demonstration, stood nearly sightless along the huge monument walls and imagined how a statue of Roosevelt in a wheelchair at the entrance would bring the stone to life. When Dickson was seven he was told by his doctor that he had juvenile macula degeneration and would soon be blind. As he walked with his parents out of the doctor's office, his mother told him, "If Franklin Roosevelt, who had polio and was in a wheelchair, could be President, then you can do what you want." He never forgot...