“I See,” Said the Blind Man With an Artificial Retina

Posted on by Lori Jia

Discover, September 15, 2011

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For 100 million people around the globe who suffer from macular degeneration and other diseases of the retina, life is a steady march from light into darkness. The intricate layers of neurons at the backs of their eyes gradually degrade and lose the ability to snatch photons and translate them into electric signals that are sent to the brain. Vision steadily blurs or narrows, and for some, the world fades to black. Until recently some types of retinal degeneration seemed as inevitable as the wrinkling of skin or the graying of hair—only far more terrifying and debilitating. But recent studies offer hope that eventually the darkness may be lifted.

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Autumn yammerings: Where I’ll be talking this fall

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

After a fairly quiet summer, I’m going to be giving some talks this fall, starting around my neighborhood and then radiating outwards. Here’s a preliminary list of public events. I may be adding extra ones as the launch of Science Ink approaches. You can find the most up-to-date information on my talks page.

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The cell’s changing room: My new profile of Lasker-award winner Arthur Horwich

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

In tomorrow’s New York Times, I have a profile of Arthur Horwich, a medical geneticist who has spent a quarter century trying to figure out the workings of this beautiful molecular box. Today he won the Lasker Award, a prize for medicine that has often gone to scientists who later won the Nobel. Why all accolades for a little box? Because without it, you’d be dead. And as Horwich and others have discovered what goes on inside, they’ve helped change the way we understand the biology of the cell. Check it out.

[Image of GroEL from Molecular Chaperone Group, Birkbeck College]

Horwich Wins Lasker Award by Straddling Science and Medicine

Posted on by admin

The New York Times, September 12, 2011

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NEW HAVEN — Medicine is a divided world. On one side are the doctors, who come face to face with illness each day and try to heal their patients with whatever tools they can get their hands on. On the other are the researchers, who explore the body’s microscopic complexity, never sure whether their discoveries will ever end up in the hands of the doctors.

Dr. Arthur Horwich, a medical geneticist at Yale University, lives in both worlds. “I’ve always been on the fence between science and medicine,” he said. “I could never make up my mind.”

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