Fran Fulton
is a 66 year old woman who suffers from retinitis pimentosa, an eye disease
which causes light cells of the retina to die. She has been blind for about 10
years, until the Argus II system was created. Argus II is a pair of
camera-equipped glasses that are hooked up to electrodes implanted on the
eyeball, in this case in Fulton’s eyeball, which feed her brain visual
information. The Argus II is made up of three parts: an electrode array, a pair
of glasses, and a converter box. The pair of glasses is used for a camera. The
image of this camera is transmitted into the converter box, which can be
carried in a pocket or a purse. Then the box sends signals to the electrode
array which is implanted onto the patient’s retina; eventually sending visual
signals to the brain. Robert Greenberg is the president and CEO of the Second
Sight, the company that developed the Argus II. The author quoted Greenberg, “Greenberg says its best imagined as
looking like a pixilated image, or staring at a digital scoreboard held just in
front of your eyes. There are regions of light and dark that collectively the
brain recognizes as an image.” Fulton says it is difficult to describe
what she sees, “People say you’ll see shapes, but it’s the electrical impulses, and it’s about learning how to interpret them. It’s not that it’s hard; it’s just a learning curve. It’s something that I’m learning.” What Fulton can really see is areas of light and dark. Her awareness of objects around her has improved immensely, “I am able to now identify doorways and objects on the street. I can’t tell you whether it’s a flowerpot or a homeless person collecting money, but I can tell you there’s an object there.” People who have lost their sight because of a damaged retina cannot participate in this project. But for someone like Fulton who has good retina yet lost her sight along the years, being able to see again is exciting.
The purpose of this article was
to inform. Through the entire article the author was explaining and informing
the reader about the new project called Argus II, which is allowing blind
people to be able to see again. Rose Eveleth,
the author, used informal language to connect with the reader and made good use
of transitions and her grammar. Eveleth’s article was an easy and interesting
piece to read because she shows the reader both the experience of a patient with
the camera-equipped glasses in her eyeball and the producer of the Argus II. The
quotes she used from both sides are well blended in with her topic and add to her
objective for this article. This piece was about two pages long, which is a
reasonable size compared to the amount of detailed information Eveleth used to
inform the audience. The article has a good conclusion showing how the patient
learned to live with her new eye and how thankful she was to get her sight back;
the author even provided the reader with a picture of Fulton and her family. It
was a well written article, informing all who read about the impact and
improvement that science has in humans’ life.
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