The other toe got a sham injection for comparison.

The trial involved 716 patients who either received an injection of Lucentis in their eye once a month or received a sham injection.

But when they gave 10 monkeys sham injections with salt water before inoculating them with S.I.V., every one became infected.

Over all, about 95 percent of the patients receiving Lucentis injections maintained or improved their vision compared with only 62 percent of a control group given a sham injection.

Other investigators who read Dr. Law's paper said, however, that his study design made it impossible to say whether the treatment was beneficial because the study did not include a comparison group of boys who would have sham injections.

In the October 2006 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Rosenfield, et al. reported that monthly intravitreal injection of ranibizumab led to significant increase in the level of mean visual acuity compared to that of sham injection.