Addison man candidate for bionic sight surgery

ADDISON – Phillip Farren Sr.’s quest for a cure for blindness will soon lead him to Utah, where he is a candidate for bionic artificial sight surgery.

The procedure has never been performed in the United States, and Farren said he believes the only similar operation was done in Portugal. He was unsure of its success. “This is strictly experimental,” he said Wednesday.

Farren, 65, of Addison has been an activist in pursuing potential treatments for sight problems. In 2000, he started the Phillip Farren Gift of Sight Foundation to raise money for research to find a cure to reverse blindness.

In his latest effort, Farren expects to travel to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where a professor, Richard Normann, is conducting research for the project at the university’s Center for Neural Interfaces. The procedure is experimental: It still needs U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.

But Normann’s stated long-term goal is to make products available that could possibly provide the blind with visual capability, the deaf with auditory functions, and the paralyzed with the ability to move. He founded Bionic Technologies LLC to develop tools and systems for neuroscientists investigating the functions of the central nervous system.

Normann declined to talk to a reporter by telephone Wednesday but has previously explained the technology as being applicable to blind people who had lost their sight through accident or disease, rather than those born blind.

A microchip, called the Utah Electrode Array, is implanted in the brain where the optic nerves meet, according to Farren. This conceivably would allow the patient to see through a pair of glasses containing televisionlike screens. A small transmitter, which Farren said looks much like a small electronic game, sends signals to the brain and allows you to see.

Farren heard about the experimental project from a friend who had researched it on the Internet. Farren called the phone number listed on a Web site and was selected as a candidate for the surgery.

After being exposed to a chemical explosion when he was 15, Farren lost the sight in his right eye. An infection in that eye in the 1970s caused doctors to remove it. In 1996, Farren had to have a cornea transplant in his left eye. Two years later, one of the stitches from that surgery broke, a life-threatening infection set in, and the eye had to be removed.

“So I became blind just overnight,” Farren said.

Since then, Farren has put time and effort into developing his foundation.

A recent walkathon and bake sale benefit raised $3,400 for it. About 50 people participated in the walk from the Mayhew Library in Addison to Columbia Supermarket on July 12.

“I’ve got to do something with my life, and if I could do something to help somebody else it would be worth it all,” Farren said.

More information, contact the Phillip Farren Gift of Sight Foundation, 396 Ridge Road, Addison 04606.