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Artificial Body Parts
| Article
# : |
13011 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1987 |
3,756 Words |
| Author
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Lorraine Brown
Lorraine Brown is a free-lance science writer residing near
Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. |
In 1984, nineteen-year-old Steve Fonyo, from British Columbia, began a run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. Through blizzards and rainstorms, freezing cold and sweltering heat, Fonyo completed the 4700-mile trip in 425 days. It would have been an amazing feat for anyone, but was especially so for Steve Fonyo. A few years before, he had lost a leg to cancer. Fonyo wore out seven prosthetic legs on his journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast.
Fonyo could not have considered such an undertaking if he had needed to wear the heavy iron, leather, and wooden legs of earlier times. His prosthetic legs were late twentieth-century products. Made of lightweight plastics and strong, resilient metal alloys, the artificial legs that carried Fonyo across the continent were the fruits of years of research in the art/science of prosthetics.
Among its products are modern prostheses - highly sophisticated artificial parts that replace missing or defective parts of the body. Advances in this little-known profession are often imperceptible to most people, but not to those whose health, happiness, and productivity depend on their "spare parts." The concept of a person who is part-human, part-machine is moving from the realm of science fiction into our everyday world.
Like many endeavors at the leading edge of science, prosthetics is multidisciplinary. It borrows materials, methods, and specialists from medicine, electronics, computer science, anatomy, mechanical engineering, and materials science. With each research project and clinical trial of a new prosthesis, the art/science of prosthetics tries to come closer to replacing an original body part with an artificial one resembling a natural one in form and function.
Today, almost every part of the human body can be replaced. Prosthetic limbs, bones, skin, blood vessels, and some organs are worn by millions of patients who could not survive or live as well without them. Artificial blood is also becoming a reality.
Mechanical arm controlled by nerves
For many people, the word prosthesis brings to mind the artificial arms or legs worn by amputees. The smoothly functioning artificial limbs of today, however, are a sophisticated blend of the latest technologies produced by a team of specialists, under the direction of a prosthetist, who design, build, and fit them. The design and
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