Degeneres

FOR REASONS of spiritual guidance, we turn this morning to that eminent philosopher, the late Baltimore city councilman and maestro of the malaprop, Dominic "Mimi" DiPietro. I was there when Mimi committed linguistic history. He did it one fine spring morning on The Block, on a grand municipal tour of peep-show booths. "Now, I'd like to have that done to me, and who don't is not a human being," Mimi declared, gazing at some erotic miracle as several of us squeezed into a narrow viewing area.

Suddenly, a perfectly straight telephone pole appears crooked. The yellow line down the middle of the road turns wavy. A soft, blurry spot appears in the middle of a friend's face. This is how age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in America, often manifests itself before widening its swath through a person's vision. For its victims, life is never the same. "I did all my own work around the house, carpentry, plumbing, electrical - I miss that," said Arnold Rasnake, 82, a retired welder from Rosedale who noticed his first symptoms last April.

Researchers have identified a gene that causes age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the United States.Identification of the gene, reported in today's edition of the journal Science, should eventually lead to the first treatments for the disorder, possibly including gene therapy, but it may produce more immediate benefits, experts said.The course of the disease is known to be accelerated by exposure to smoking, sunlight and high-cholesterol foods, and screening for the gene would identify individuals who should avoid such risky behavior.

What a sorry ending.A year ago, after both the lead character and star came out as lesbians in a smart and funny season finale, it felt like a privilege to write about "Ellen." This was the stuff of television history -- media as sociology with a capital "S."Tonight, "Ellen" becomes history with its final episode, and my feelings are somewhere between deep disappointment and anger at Ellen DeGeneres and her show, "Ellen."Much of that feeling comes from just having seen the finale, a one-hour special titled "Ellen: A Hollywood Tribute."

One question troubling Hollywood these days is whether the comely 27-year-old actress Anne Heche has ruined her career by revealing herself publicly to be homosexual. Now that it is known she prefers women to men for her partners in love (or at least one woman), will some connection to her audience be broken, an essential chemistry or fantasy quotient irreversibly dimmed?Heche is the partner of Ellen DeGeneres, that Promethean lesbian now unbound and glowing on the heights of network television.

Hitting the right notes with musical and pre-taped segments in a television award show can be tricky. A cautionary example might be that of Rob Lowe dancing with a woman dressed as Snow White in the opening of the 1989 Oscar telecast. The juggling act becomes even trickier when a telecast primarily known for its glitter and glitz comes on the heels of a national catastrophe. In 2001, for example, the Emmy Awards show was twice postponed before finally airing in the wake of terrorist attacks.

Macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in the elderly, appears to be yielding to new laser treatments that seal off destructive blood vessels behind the retina. Although doctors caution that the treatments do not offer a cure, they say the therapies have in many cases arrested the downward course of a disease that ordinarily robs people of their sight. Next month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve a drug, verteporfin, that is used in concert with a low-powered laser.

In yesterday's Today section, the location of the headquarters of The Foundation Fighting Blindness was misidentified. The foundation is in Hunt Valley.The Sun regrets the error.For the 6 million older Americans whose vision is being threatened or destroyed by a disease called macular degeneration, and for the doctors who have long been frustrated in their efforts to treat it, last month brought a rare dose of good news.Researchers from the National Cancer Institute in Frederick and three other institutions reported in the journal Science that they had found a cluster of genetic mutations that appear to cause about one-sixth of all age-related macular degeneration, or AMD. The mutations all affect the same gene, which the researchers were able to pinpoint.

In 1938, Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with the degenerative nerve disease ALS. He would lose his capacity to walk, talk and swallow. He would die choking as the disease followed its normal, horrific course.His physicians could scarcely imagine what caused it.Now, researchers speak of progress - hints that they can slow the disease's destruction. They do not, however, speak of cures.Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, causes the atrophy and death of specialized nerve cells in the spinal cord that control virtually all the muscles that enable us to move.

It probably doesn't matter any more, this being the last day of "The Arsenio Hall Show," but the record ought to show that even as a lame duck, Hall owned late-night talk show TV in Baltimore.The Nielsen ratings for the May sweeps month were released yesterday, and Baltimore viewers tossed one last bouquet at the A-Man -- again making him a clear No. 1 in the late-night war with David Letterman and Jay Leno.The numbers show that Hall was the favorite in 58,000 area homes, while Leno was viewed in 45,000 homes and Letterman in only 36,000.