Sometimes you do have to bank on yourself. You do have to believe in your ideas enough to really get out there and fight for it despite what people think of some young kids from the hood.
The good news is we are seeing an incredible surge in non-animal technologies in laboratories. With researchers using stem cells, visually impaired people may one day have new corneas and lenses grown from their own cells. That is likely to be a more effective and cheaper approach than using animals.