Gene Therapy Cures Color Blindness in Monkeys

For two squirrel monkeys nicknamed Dalton and Sam, life has gotten a lot more colorful. Researchers used gene therapy to correct the color blindness of the two adult monkeys, giving them the ability to distinguish between red and green for the first time. The fascinating accomplishment suggests that scientists may someday be able to cure other kinds of blindness in humans. And because the treated monkeys were “middle aged”, it challenges the assumption that gene therapies cannot work in adults because their brain connections are too set in their ways to change beneficially [New Scientist].