Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son's tooth in his eye

andyd273 · Post by **andyd273** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 7:00 pm

From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/irelandbrit ... &printer=1

DUBLIN (AFP) - An Irishman blinded by an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored after doctors inserted his son's tooth in his eye, he said on Wednesday.

Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded at a re-cycling business in November 2005.

"I thought that I was going to be blind for the rest of my life," McNichol told RTE state radio.

After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do, McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England.

The technique, pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient's own tooth and the surrounding bone.

The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw.

McNichol's right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth.

The first operation lasted ten hours and the second five hours.

"It is pretty heavy going," McNichol said. "There was a 65 percent chance of me getting any sight.

"Now I have enough sight for me to get around and I can watch television. I have come out from complete darkness to be able to do simple things," McNichol said.

jodymonster · Post by **jodymonster** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:09 pm

Ew...
I can't decide if I'm glad they didn't have a picture of the reconstructed eyetooth (heehee) or not. I'm curious, but I get the feeling it'd probably be something I'll have freaky nightmares about.

That's awesome that he can see now, but I wanna ask whoever came up with the idea to shove a tooth in someone's eye how he came up with the idea to shove a tooth in someone's eye. I don't think that would have occurred to me.
Alright, how do I help this blind guy see... I know! I'll yank out a tooth, drill a hole in it, and jam it into his skull! Of course! It's so simple!
I mean, is that how it went?

bolddeceiver · Post by **bolddeceiver** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 2:13 am

Who hasn't thought of that at least once?

Post by **normsherman** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 2:58 am

Yah, I think people have wanted to put their teeth in their eyes for a long time- it's just until recently that we've finally acquired the technology to live out that dream.

andyd273 · Post by **andyd273** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 2:01 pm

What would we do without the scientific attitude?
You know the one: We do what me must, just because we can.
Or maybe its the other one: I wonder what will happen if I stick this into there?

adam · Post by **adam** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:46 pm

andyd273 wrote:Or maybe its the other one: I wonder what will happen if I stick this into there?

i feel like this one pre-dates scientific inquiry. i can imagine adam asking eve this, just out of dumb curiosity, then getting a screaming little slimey answer 9 months later.

strawman · Post by **strawman** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:18 pm

Philosophical zombie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A philosophical zombie or p-zombie is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, sentience, or sapience. When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain. It behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "Ouch!" and so forth), but it does not actually have the experience of pain as a person normally does.

The notion of a philosophical zombie is mainly used in arguments (often called zombie arguments) in the philosophy of mind, particularly arguments against forms of physicalism, such as materialism and behaviorism.

"Mommy, where do zombies come from?"
"Well, honey, when two solipsists love each other very much..."

bolddeceiver · Post by **bolddeceiver** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 3:23 am

strawman wrote:"Mommy, where do zombies come from?"
"Well, honey, when two solipsists love each other very much..."

Q: What do you call a room full of solipsists?
A: Wrong.

Mr. Tweedy · Post by **Mr. Tweedy** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:21 am

Great, now you went and offended all the solipsists! How is a moderator supposed to keep things civil with people flinging around these inflammatory remarks? Who will be the next target of your flames? The epiphenomenalists? The Neo-Objectivists? Is no one safe?

Going back to the tooth in the eye: I couldn't figure out why the surgery requires a tooth. It seemed like the tooth was just a scaffold on which to mount a lens. Couldn't a chunk of ceramic do the same job?

jodymonster · Post by **jodymonster** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:56 am

Tooth is more fun. Not only do you get to implant something in the skull but you get to yank out a tooth and some jawbone.
Yeah, I don't know. A friend of mine has a bunch of metal pins holding his ankle together, and he can walk just fine. It seems like if that works, we should have the technology to work out something slightly less gruesome then a tooth in the eye socket. But then it wouldn't really be drabblenews.

strawman · Post by **strawman** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:33 am

[quote="Mr. Tweedy Who will be the next target of your flames? The epiphenomenalists? The Neo-Objectivists? Is no one safe?quote]

Tweeds, in DC-land, the only safety is in dull and boring. The whole eye tooth thing left me frustrated, beginning with wondering about the uncanny "coincidence" (wink, wink) that an eye tooth would work for an eye operation! I mean, there you have it, right in front of your face: potentially conclusive proof of Intelligent Design!
But the term appears to have no etymology. I googled high and low; I consulted my 15 pound dictionary, even tried Wiki-dentist. Nada.

Could this be due to the existence of an Unnamed Namer? I am now weighing that possibility against the alternative hypothesis, that God is a
p-zombie.

adam · Post by **adam** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:23 pm

bolddeceiver wrote:"Q: What do you call a room full of solipsists?
A: Wrong.

man, this joke is awesome. you can interpret it in at least 3 totally different ways- all of which are pretty funny.

concerning the tooth-eye, i wondered the same thing. then the article mentions it's just part of the tooth- plus the root/nerve and jawbone, which makes a little more sense. there are lots of things you could use as a support structure for a fake eye, but not a lot of them already have a live nerve and root running through them that you can connect a lense to. the tooth's nerve must act as the optic nerve, and then it's just brilliantly convenient that it's nessled into a little support structure already, with a chunk of jaw right there to hold it all in place.

now the real question we need to be asking is- why his sons tooth? i mean, the guy's got like 32 of his own- it's probably the last thing a person would ever need a donor for...

adam · Post by **adam** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:37 pm

what's going to be awesome is when fake eyes are way better than real ones. check this crap out -
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/disco ... rg-vision/

also, i just realized these forums pick up on most commonly used words in each thread and puts up ads/banners to match them. which is annoyingly clever. there are banners on this one for dentures and tooth whiteners; and most of the other drabblenews threads have corresponding ads to the topic.

i'm going to start trying to throw off the system by droping lots of random words in my posts to see what kind of weird banner ads are out there.
maybe there's a banner for wombat exterminators?
wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators wombat exterminators

strawman · Post by **strawman** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:21 pm

adam wrote:
bolddeceiver wrote:"Q: What do you call a room full of solipsists?
A: Wrong.

Genius.
Too bad it's 4 words too long for Philippa's Hemingway contest.

Mr. Tweedy · Post by **Mr. Tweedy** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:34 pm

Okay... Anyone wanting to demonstrate my witlessness a later date can use this as a handy reference, but I don't get it.

A solipsist is someone who believes that it is impossible to really prove anything except that one's own mind exists. The only assuredly true statement is "I am."

So you have a room full of people who consider the objective existence of one another unprovable. And all of them are wrong... Because they really do have objective existence?

Ha ha?

strawman · Post by **strawman** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 10:58 pm

A solipsist is one who, as a consequence of his belief that nothing but his own existence is provable, believes that everyone else, and possibly his own body, is a figment of his imagination. Each believes that all the others are p-zombies
Each solipsist in the room believes this. Each and every one is wrong, individually, collectively, kind of exponentially 'wrong'.

bolddeceiver · Post by **bolddeceiver** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 6:09 am

What makes them wrong is that, since the joke is being told, there is an outside observer to observe that there is a room full of solipsists.

Plus, "wrong or possibly wrong except for one" is too long for a punchline.

Post by **normsherman** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 6:47 am

That site/idea rocks

Mr. Tweedy · Post by **Mr. Tweedy** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 2:15 pm

Ah. I was just trying to think too hard about it.

andyd273 · Post by **andyd273** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 2:40 pm

adam wrote:now the real question we need to be asking is- why his sons tooth? i mean, the guy's got like 32 of his own- it's probably the last thing a person would ever need a donor for...

Well, I don't know if Ireland is anything like England when it comes to dental care, but maybe he didn't have any of the right type that was in pristine condition... If it had to be a molar, and one without a filling, then my guess is that he didn't have any of the right type, so they had to go to someone young that hadn't had time to rot all his teeth...

Just my guess.

The Drabblecast Forums

Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son's tooth in his eye

Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son's tooth in his eye

Philosophical Zombies!

I came up with this one a few weeks ago...

Re: I came up with this one a few weeks ago...

Re: I came up with this one a few weeks ago...