(3 of 3)
Even more sophisticated devices may enable the totally deaf to hear or the blind to see. Doctors at the Los Angeles Ear Research Institute have implanted an electronic stimulator in the ears of five patients, while researchers at the University of Utah's Institute for Biomedical Engineering are working on an artificial hearing system that would directly stimulate the brain's auditory area (TIME cover, Jan. 14). A Boston researcher is trying to adapt a night-vision device used by the Army for victims of retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease that causes progressive blindness.
Scientists at the Utah institute and in London, Ont., are experimenting with an artificial vision unit that would enable blind patients to see. Their system, which is far from ready for general use, would involve implanting a subminiature television camera in a glass eye, a tiny computer in a conventional eyeglass frame and electrodes in the brain to stimulate the visual cortex. Doctors are still not sure just how long the brain can safely be electronically stimulated, but they do have encouraging indications that their visual prosthesis will work. In tests using a regular television camera, two patients, one of them a 29-year-old ex-G.I. who lost his sight in Viet Nam seven years ago, "saw" and recognized patterns formed by dots of light. Dr. Willem Kolff, director of the Utah institute, predicts that when the device is perfected, it will enable the blind to see something "like a picture on the Scoreboard of the Houston Astrodome."
VITAL ORGANS. Kolff, who developed the first dialysis machine, or artificial kidney, used for treating patients, is also working on a miniaturized model that could be carried over the shoulder in a case no bigger than a large handbag. The almost complete lack of success with heart transplants—mostly because of the body's rejection of foreign tissue —has accelerated research on the artificial heart—or at least on replacements for parts of the heart. Doctors at the Texas Heart Institute are working on three types of assist pumps for damaged hearts—a pneumatic device for short-term relief and electric-and nuclear-powered machines for longer-term use. Dr. George Magovern of Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh is trying to adapt nuclear power to replace a ventricle, one of the main pumping chambers, in a damaged heart. Late last year in Utah, Kolff s team implanted a complete artificial heart in a calf. The animal, named Crocker, survived the operation, regained its appetite, stood up and walked around for 28 days before a clot blocked the blood flow—buoying hopes that humans too may some day be sustained by artificial hearts.
*An ex-astronaut equiped, after a near-fatal crash, with atomic-powered legs and an arm, and a zoom-lens eye.