Attention Media: There is No Such Thing as a Cure for Blindness

Last week the media got on the"doctors cure blindness" band wagon again because a small number of children with Lieber's Congenital Amaurosis (LCA) have had their vision restored thanks to gene therapy. As exciting as this is, I am sick and tired of the main stream media misleading the public about what it means to be blind and what can and can not bring our vision back. It is time that the media take responsibility for actually informing people, which means not clumping all of the blind into one category.

I have written a few posts here about possible ways that doctors may one day restore my vision. All of them have centered around treatment for retinal disease because that's what I am dealing with. I've been very specific about this because there is no one cure for blindness. The eye is a very complex organ in the human body. This complexity means that numerous things can go wrong, which means that the task of restoring vision to all blind people in the world is a task that may never be accomplished.

I am really passionate about this need for the media to be truthful with their headlines because they are the main source of information for the masses. The last thing that people like me need is for our friends to tell us to tune into a news story because it talks about curing blindness. This will likely lead to us getting our hopes up only to find out that the disease the doctors are treating isn't what we have. I understand the need and desire to pull readers and viewers in with a catchy headline, but the headline shouldn't be misleading.

People with disabilities spend their whole lives trying their best to educate those around them. Imagine how much easier our jobs would be if the media actually gave people useful and correct information. All they have to do is change their headlines slightly to reflect what the story is actually about, but I guess that would mean that they couldn't mislead us anymore.

If we can get them to stop treating blindness as one disease, maybe just maybe we can stop them from talking about how "normal" a life someone can have once their vision is restored. Do we have a fighting chance?