Nashville, TN | A Blind Man Can See - Eye Reconstruction | Wang Vision Institute

Speaker 1: Our next guest is an eye surgeon, Dr. Ming Wang. He was on our show several months ago telling a story of someone who had their eyesight restored. It was such a popular clip, as I mentioned in the opening of the show, someone even from Morocco saw the clip, came to Nashville and Dr. Wang was able to help save the site in one of the eyes. He's an amazing guy, amazing person, loves the Lord. We want to show the clip again that we showed a few months ago to tell that story of this sight restoration. So let's watch this clip.

Speaker 2: With a Bible in hand, Brad Barnes has left a lot of what is about to happen today to a higher power.

Dr. Ming Wang: You're ready?

Brad Barnes: I'm ready.

Speaker 2: 13 years ago, Brad lost his sight in a foundry explosion. Molten aluminum burned his body and his eyes for what Brad thought would be forever.

Dr. Ming Wang: After 15 major surgeries at sever major medical centers, he was declared to be irreversibly blind.

Speaker 2: Barnes was referred to Dr. Ming Wang's foundation for sight restoration. He was the first person in the world to receive a procedure developed by Dr. Wang, a combination saliva gland transplant and laser artificial cornea implantation.

Dr. Ming Wang: I think this is a dawn of new era of transplantation medicine, manmade body parts. You reduce the risk of organ transplantation rejection, which is the number one problem in organ transplantation.

Speaker 2: Yesterday was the final surgery in a two year journey. Today, Brad's bandages are removed. It's unclear because of blood and swelling how much Brad might see. Dr. Wang cleans out his eye and slowly opens the lid. Supporters wait with nervous anticipation.

Brad Barnes: I see a thumb up. Yeah. Thumbs up. I see it.

Dr. Ming Wang: You can see a thumb?

Brad Barnes: Yes. Hang on, don't move.

Dr. Ming Wang: Okay. Don't move.

Brad Barnes: Is this your face?

Dr. Ming Wang: Yes.

Brad Barnes: Yeah. I see your face over there.

Speaker 2: The most important thing Brad can now see is his wife Jackie.

Brad Barnes: Yeah. I can see you now.

Speaker 2: For the first time in nearly 13 years, Brad sees himself in a mirror.

Brad Barnes: Yeah. That's me.

Speaker 2: With each passing minute, Brad's eyesight gets a little better.

Jackie: I'm just so overwhelmed. It's very surreal. I'm just really happy.

Speaker 2: Brad is fascinated by things we take for granted, like a crumbled piece of tissue. But it's clear, this is a life changing day.

Brad Barnes: This is incredible. This is incredible. Man, I can't even believe this.

Speaker 2: A moment to witness a patient going from a life of darkness to sight personally priceless for Dr. Wang and everyone involved.

Dr. Ming Wang: That moment is worth all the hard work and research and sleepless nights for decades.

Speaker 1: That is amazing. Dr Wang, thanks for being here again. When we showed that clip before, talk about what happened because I've mentioned it twice about the person in Morocco that saw that clip.

Dr. Ming Wang: The clip was shown the TBN show in February and I got an email like two days after. A young lady who lived in Morocco had this progressive blinding condition for the past five years to the point that she completely lost sight in one eye. She went to France, Australia and several other countries and nobody could diagnose why she was losing sight in that eye. And she began to lose sight in the only remaining eye like two weeks prior to this show. Every day, she was losing more and more sight and it was a blessing that while she still had a little bit side left, with the limited sight she saw the show and sent us an email and a day or two later she was in Nashville, Tennessee.

Dr. Ming Wang: And it's just God work his miracles through whatever limited capacity function we have. Through that, he can still work his miracle through and we perform a complete thorough testing and found out that she had a very rare genetic disease and that was why no one has been able to diagnosis. And we took her to operating room the next day and did a surgery and was able to restore the sight and a week or two later she flew home. And it was just amazing that God, that across oceans, across culture, across countries that his inference, his words is transcending all cultures.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Ming, you were, this is so funny. Because after that show aired in February and that testimony happened, Ming was just he came to me and says I have emails from 52 countries. And that is really something to constantly be reminded of on the show is that people from all over the world, over 200 countries are watching this. It's a fantastic network, a great work of faith that this family, the Crouches, and all the team around them have done. Thank you so much, Ming, for coming back because one of the other things that was picked up on was as a scientist you went to Harvard, you studied at MIT and so here you are with a PhD and an MD and yet you are a of of of absolute faith.

Speaker 1: You see no contradiction between your faith and science. In fact, we did at a local university, we did a tag team match. Trust me, I was the warm up band for you. But talking about science and faith and that there is no contradiction. That's a statement you make that there is no contradiction though apparently contradictory. There is no contradiction. Why don't you pick up on that and just talk about that? Because when you make those statements from your academic and scientific background, people have to stand up and take notice or sit up and take notice.

Dr. Ming Wang: Yeah. We are living in a very challenging time. All the temptations of modern living where there's more material wealth and more information, faster cars and more expensive things. That is carrying human being in the direction that unless we watch out ourselves is going to be in a direction that will have lesser God and lesser spiritual existence and more physical existence, emphasis on physical. And in this case, there was this notion was the continuous scientific development, whether it's molecular genetics, cell, cellular biology, that more knowledge we accumulate and there's lesser presence of God.

Dr. Ming Wang: And what I found through my own experience studying science, medicine and trying to help people, I have found just the opposite. It's interesting that the more that I've studied medicine in this case, I reconstructive surgeries, more I found out that I don't know. The more I studied, the more I find myself have to resort to God's teaching and to faith. And some of the greatest scientists in humankind's history, Albert Einstein, Newton, they believe in God. Because when you truly master a subject, whether it's mathematics or physics or chemistry or biology, when you truly understand, you actually can elevate yourself and realize there's bigger inference of God's presence and there's more importance, not less the question of faith.

Dr. Ming Wang: They always say that if a great a physicist, if he or she's really good with the subject, he or she is almost like an artist, but not the other way around. And not a great artist can become a physicist because emotion to spiritual, it's at a higher level of mere human numbers and knowledge.