After nerve-wracking eye surgery, the world comes into focus for early gene therapy recipient
In March, a 13-year-old boy became the first person to receive a pricey gene therapy since it had hit the market. Now his family wondered, did it work?
BOSTON — The machine looked like a giant eyeball. There was a hole where the pupil should have been, and the technician told Jack Hogan to stick his head inside. As the white dome began to flash with light, electrical messages began zinging up from his retina to his brain — and every flicker of voltage was picked up by the electrode that had been stuck onto his cornea.
“It hurts,” Jack said, his voice echoing around the Giant Eyeball Machine.
About eight weeks earlier, in March, his eyes had been just as hollow. He’d been the to get an since it had hit the market. It was intended to replace a mutant gene in Jack’s retinal cells
