About the Film
From Walter Reed Army Medical Center to university labs across the country to the Amputee Coalition's camp for kids, this documentary takes us on a trip through an intriguing science that is changing what it means to lose a limb. What was futuristic just a few years ago is is occurring now. Why now?
Advances in prosthetics always coincide with wars. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have spurred unprecedented focus and funding, just as emerging technologies and developments in neuroscience are providing opportunities that never existed before. Body armor is saving lives that would have been lost in prior wars, but ironically a larger percentage of those survivors are upper limb amputees. The federally funded response is DARPA’s “Revolutionizing Prosthetics” -- a project committed to the design of an entirely new type of prosthetic arm. At the same time, breakthroughs in neuro-engineering, such as Targeted Muscle Reinnervation, are allowing amputees to control the early prototypes of those robotic arms with their thoughts alone.
Soldiers who have lost limbs understandably receive the most media attention and the most advanced prosthetics, but they are only a fraction of the 2 million amputees in the US alone. In fact amputees are "invisibly" all around us; every day 500 Americans lose a limb to diabetes, peripheral artery disease, cancer, and accidents. Many millions more around the world lose limbs to landmines, disease, wars and earthquakes.
So who will this transformative science actually reach? And who is still fighting for prosthetics that have been available for years? In America, it’s easier to replace a failing organ than to replace a failing prosthesis.
Sometimes advances in the field come from amputees themselves. One of them is Van Phillips. Years ago he threw away his own first prosthetic foot as well as the conventional dogma of the day that a prosthetic foot should look like a foot. Studying how animals run and the dynamics of motion, he invented the Flex-Foot, a simple shape made of carbon graphite that revolutionized prosthetic foot design. Recently his “Cheetah foot” caused a controversy when the Olympics Committee claimed it would give double amputee Oscar Pistorius an unfair advantage over normal limbed runners.
Van recalls that when he was a boy, he thought all amputees must be homeless men because they were the only ones he ever saw-- with their rolled up pants and peg legs. Now many amputees have come out of hiding, in large part due to the new technology. A generation that grew up on play stations and computers operates the bionic I-Limb hand easily and wears the computerized C-leg proudly and is ready for what’s coming next.
Advances in prosthetics always coincide with wars. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have spurred unprecedented focus and funding, just as emerging technologies and developments in neuroscience are providing opportunities that never existed before. Body armor is saving lives that would have been lost in prior wars, but ironically a larger percentage of those survivors are upper limb amputees. The federally funded response is DARPA’s “Revolutionizing Prosthetics” -- a project committed to the design of an entirely new type of prosthetic arm. At the same time, breakthroughs in neuro-engineering, such as Targeted Muscle Reinnervation, are allowing amputees to control the early prototypes of those robotic arms with their thoughts alone.
Soldiers who have lost limbs understandably receive the most media attention and the most advanced prosthetics, but they are only a fraction of the 2 million amputees in the US alone. In fact amputees are "invisibly" all around us; every day 500 Americans lose a limb to diabetes, peripheral artery disease, cancer, and accidents. Many millions more around the world lose limbs to landmines, disease, wars and earthquakes.
So who will this transformative science actually reach? And who is still fighting for prosthetics that have been available for years? In America, it’s easier to replace a failing organ than to replace a failing prosthesis.
Sometimes advances in the field come from amputees themselves. One of them is Van Phillips. Years ago he threw away his own first prosthetic foot as well as the conventional dogma of the day that a prosthetic foot should look like a foot. Studying how animals run and the dynamics of motion, he invented the Flex-Foot, a simple shape made of carbon graphite that revolutionized prosthetic foot design. Recently his “Cheetah foot” caused a controversy when the Olympics Committee claimed it would give double amputee Oscar Pistorius an unfair advantage over normal limbed runners.
Van recalls that when he was a boy, he thought all amputees must be homeless men because they were the only ones he ever saw-- with their rolled up pants and peg legs. Now many amputees have come out of hiding, in large part due to the new technology. A generation that grew up on play stations and computers operates the bionic I-Limb hand easily and wears the computerized C-leg proudly and is ready for what’s coming next.