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AudioGames.net Forum → Off-topic room → can I do this as a blind person?
so, I used to want to be a doctor but I quickly learned that wasn't going to be possible as a blind person. But I thought of something else that may be possible.
so... You know those guys that design vaccines? I don't think something like that requires vision but I could be wrong. Could a blind person work in that kind of field?
Well... There are blind doctors actually, such as [Tim Cordes], [Stanley Wainapel] or [Jacob Bolotin]. But if your more interested in the field of vaccine development, there's a list of requirements and courses and such [here], mostly things like molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology or biotechnology at a masters or doctorate level.
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This seems like one of those things where there's probably no tools for you to access half the information you'll need to access, but go for it I guess.
There are many blind people who work as physiotherapists as well if this is something interesting to you, actually my sighted friend who studies physiotherapy says they take all sort of anatomy and study many medical subjects, but I have no clue whether the people I've been told about hold really a medical degree in physiotherapy or was it something related to massage. I think anatomy requires sight, but you should ask around about this field and its accessibility of studies, since practically, it would be the most convenient one for a blind person to work at. I know also blind nurses too btw.
In practice, this sort of stuff will require very high levels of chemistry and biology, in which not only do the chemical formulas matter but also the 3d shapes of molecules and things like that (e.g. google protein folding). It's probably not impossible, but you're going to have a hell of a time with it, and something like programming is going to look trivial by comparison. Programming is trivial by comparison to normal doctors too, really, but nonetheless.
So it depends: are you willing to sacrifice years of your life for it? I wouldn't unless you really, really want to be in medicine. I'm not sure what the exact requirements on this are, but it's going to start with at least 6 years at a college and you probably need a PHD for starters--and I can't imagine that it's easier than normal med school, which has some ridiculously high failure rate for the sighted, never mind the blindness.
Put another way: if this question is "is this possible"? yeah, technically you can probably do it. If this question is "is this a viable career path"? The answer is something like only if you're okay with a high chance of failure and have some sort of burning drive that medicine is the one and only thing that you want to do, plus some sort of funding. Frankly that's how it goes for the sighted too, based off the couple of people I've known who have done this, but as a blind person you're always looking at 2x the work no matter what it is, and 2x "I study every waking moment" is certainly going to be intense. if you do decide to do it, I'd keep some sort of backup path in mind.
I took four anatomy or physiology based courses in college, so it can be done. I am not sure about the chemistry aspects though.
To me it sounds like a lot of looking through microscopes and such. Maybe the research part of it and running the experamints you could do. I'm not sure but it does sound like it would be a lot of work on your end.
With the caveat that I'm not qualified in this field at all and my understanding is indirect via friends and via being interested in supercomputing/quantum computing stuff, my understanding is that most modern research on vaccines and similar is complicated simulations. Frankly, the kinds of things vaccines deal with are so small that the kinds of microscopes that you look at them with don't really even involve lenses as you know them, and in general this is one of those fields where it's "if we get quantum computers we won't have to spend hours on supercomputing clusters". The microscope isn't the problem; the inaccessible analysis software is the problem, among other things like it. Basic anatomy courses and things like high school/low-level college biology extend to it in the same way that physics has Newton's laws but it turns out all the fun stuff is "actually Newton was wrong, here is general relativity, what do you mean you don't have several years of math yet?". But in any case, your "lab" isn't a lab, it's virtual stuff--think mathematica/matlab for biologists.
Looking up a bit on Tim Cordes, seems he actually wrote a custom visualization tool called [TimMol], or Tonal interface to MacroMolecules, for viewing atoms in protein structures for biochemistry work. The only other research group i've seen creating audio interfaces for protein sequencing would be those guys out of MIT that I posted about before [here].
If your curious, I did try to dig up a link for a download to TimMol, but other than a few research article references haven't turned up anything. The only link goes to the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin, but ends up dead. Maybe if someone contacted them they might have it lying around somewhere.
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Yeah, the question is always how much work do you want to put into it. No matter what, by nature of the specialized circumstances we need, we always need to put in as has been stated, 2 times the work. That being said, anatomy is not too bad as a blind person so long as you don't mind getting your hands a little dirty. A pair of thin gloves and some concentration, and you can feel the shapes of muscles, the little indents of bones, and a good number of other things. Also, having a mind for visualization really helps.
Well, you could, but it would probably be very, very very difficult. Firstly, you are going to need a lot of sited help to understand a lot of the material since a lot of it is going to be very visual.
Second, there's the vaccine making part. Since vaccine making involves chemical reactions, how are you going to know whether you have the right reaction. If the chemical reaction is supposed to become green after an hour, how would you know that is the case? Yes, vaccine making is done in teams. however, I don't know how many sited people would be willing to work in such a field with a blind person considering that chemical reactions can be dangerous sometimes. Maybe you should talk with someone who has experience in the field?
I think it could theoretically be possible, but would you want to do it that much? I mean Camlorn makes a really good point here. In any field, blindness basicly means you do 2x the time and work, and are at least that much inefficient. Also, that is without a field which isn't automatically harder for a blind person due to visualisation, simulations as well as the visual representations of proteins would automatically mean more work. Alsio, that is before I even get into advanced degrees. Advanced/graduate degrees require massive amounts of work motivation and dedication.. When I was doing my masters degree in a field, that didn't even have too many substantially harder aspects, tutors would tell everyone in the college that you should spend 8 hours a day working and the remaining 8 socializing. But if you're blind, and even if you wern't, that was a pipe dream. There was no way a blind person with that workload could work 8 hours and not fail or fall behind, which basicly meant spending almost all your time doing the work. I am not trying trying to stop you from pursuing your dreams, but also want you to realize everything that involves.
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