FDA votes against Bionic Eyes

Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 13, 2006 in Science |

Fan of the Six Million Dollar Man will remember Steve’s bionic eyes, well it looks like that technology will remain science fiction for a while yet (but it’s neat to know they are working on this stuff):

FDA Says No to Bionic Eye
livescience.com/humanbiology/ap_060715_bionic_eye.html

A U.S. company had hoped that next year that might be your grandmother. Not so fast, a federal advisory panel said Friday. A tiny telescope designed to be implanted in the eyes of some elderly patients should not receive Food and Drug Administration approval, the panel recommended on a 10-3 vote. The FDA’s ophthalmic devices panel recommended against the pea-sized bionic device for safety reasons, spokeswoman Heidi Valetkevitch said.

The first-of-its-kind device is called the Implantable Miniature Telescope. The telephoto lens could enable some patients to do away with the special glasses and handheld telescopes they now use to compensate for the loss in central vision caused by age-related macular degeneration, according to VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies Inc., its manufacturer.

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