Pioneering surgery lets blind boy, 17, see again

A blind teenager has started to regain his vision after groundbreaking surgery by doctors at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Budding musician Stephen Howarth, who suffers from a rare form of childhood blindness, is now able to walk alone at home and outside. Researchers from UCL Institute of Ophthalmology worked with a surgical team at the specialist eye hospital in east London to use gene therapy to regenerate dying cells in the 17-year-old's right eye.

Under the pioneering technique, healthy copies of a faulty gene were injected into the student's eye to enable him to detect light and to prevent the cells degenerating further and leading to complete sight loss.

Before the procedure, he was barely able to see at night but is now able to move around without bumping into objects and frequently walks home late at night from his local railway station in Bolton. He is the third person to have undergone the operation.

The Evening Standard reported last May on the first patient, Robert Johnson, 23, to receive the treatment. Although the gene therapy did not improve Mr Johnson or the second patient's vision, it may well have stopped their eyesight from declining.