Human night vision? Just an eye injection away

Human night vision? Just an eye injection away

It's like something out of a comic book, but it's real.

A small-time group of independent scientists have pulled off what sounds like a backyard freak-show stunt. Their brave volunteer, Gabriel Licina, allowed the rogue scientists of “Science for the Masses”, as they call themselves, to inject his eyeballs with a specialized liquid solution with the intention of giving him night vision. The craziest part? It worked.

 

The liquid solution was Chlorin e6 (or Ce6). It is a chlorophyll analog found in deep-sea fish and known to have light-enhancing properties. The biohackers performing the experiment dripped the solution into Licina’s eye, aiming for his conjunctival sac which would then carry the solution to the retina where the magic happens. Licina describes the experience: “To me, it was a quick, greenish-black blur across my vision, and then it dissolved into my eyes.”

 

Incredibly, the procedure was a success. After the solution set in for about an hour Licina was brought to a dark field for performance testing on his new “super-vision”. The group released an open source research document stating the results of the performance test. Licina had enhanced vision out to 50 meters, and was able to identify distant figures in the dark with 100 percent accuracy. The test group was only able to successfully identify far away targets in the dark at 33 percent accuracy.

 

The group plans to do a lot more testing to find out exactly what effects their solution has on the eye, but they hope that if found to be safe and effective their solution could help search-and-rescue teams, military efforts or even just people with vision problems.

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