U.S. Soldiers Recipients of Newest Prosthetic Technologies

plaastik writes "The next generation of naturalistic and touch-sensitive artificial limbs are being worn by U.S. Soldiers. Instead of the old velcro strap and cup these new models are fused directly to the bone and are controlled by controlled by the wearer's brain. From the article: 'Future prosthetic arms will fuse to existing bone, eliminating the need for awkward attachment systems. These more naturalistic limbs will use bionic nerves attached to natural nerves to send and receive signals from the brain. Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands.'"

Comments

Re:I for one..

[The Evil Couch]

Where will all this lead to?

Cyberlimbs, wired reflexes, datajacks and cyberdecks.

We can rebuild him

[Skidge]

According to The Inflation Calculator:

What cost $6,000,000 in 1974 would cost $24,945,762.42 in 2005.

It's not cheap being a .

Re:We can rebuild him

[Skidge]

I really did preview that one. Twice. ;)

That should read "It's not cheap being a bionic man."

Re:We can rebuild him

[timeOday]

I wonder if proper body and vehicle armor is cheaper than prosthetics, multiple surgeries, psychological counseling, and a lifetime of subsequent health problems.

If only it were so easy. Up-armoring the Humvees is no miracle cure, in fact it may hurt more than it helps.

Besides, with the quality of explosives the other side is using, they can kill an M1! Charges that cut through a main battle tank are not going to be slowed down by any amount of Humvee up-armoring.

Speaking of which, I've wondered why we still call them IED's, or "immprovised" explosive devices? They've grown all too sophisticated to be called "improvised."

As for not starting the war in the first place, good idea. But now it's too late, what should we do? (Besides not repeating the same mistake in the future.)

Summary is a little optimisticly misleading

[onlysolution]

The summary makes it sound like prosthetics fused to the bone and controlled by the nervous impulses are here, but they certainly are not yet. Likewise haven't given superadvanced prosthetics to any wounded soliders yet either. As pointed out by the article, victims of the current war are not getting more advanced than advanced predictive prosthetics like the C-leg, which pretty much represent the latest in production prosthetic technology.
Don't get to excited yet people, prosthetics like the summary imagines are still a long ways off.

Feedback more important than control

[DavidV]

I lost my left hand, severed below the elbow. I have been keeping an eye on advances prosthetics but thought it would be very difficult for me to control as my hand feels like it's in a fixed position so it would be hard to coordinate the output of my nerves without any feedback. The big advance talked about here is the signal coming back to the brain to make the limb feel like part of the person rather than something just hanging off, which is what prosthetics feel like to me. I have one but I never use it for this reason. Bring on the feedback!

Re:Innovation

[vandan]

Except, of course, for creating the largest public health care segment in decades -- the Medicare prescription plan.

It depends on which way you measure it. It might be the case that the system has the largest absolute budget, but this is spread across a very large number of people. If you look at the expenditure per capita, a very different picture emerges. The US is practically the worst in the Western world for health care. That's why the most common reason why people are put in gaol ( jail for Yanks ) is for non-payment of medical bills. I wouldn't go around scoffing at your health-care system if I were you. The US system is what everyone else in the western world points at, and say "at least we're not that fucked up yet".

Except, of course, that this went down to defeat with even the Republicans in Congress showing moderately strong opposition to it.

Um. I'm not following you here. Are you saying that Republicans actually argued for spending MORE money on social security? I think you're mistaken.

Except, of course, that more money goes into the public education system from the federal government than ever before. Federal spending on pre-university education in terms of percent GDP rose by more than 40% from 2000 to 2006, and up by about two-thirds in 2000 dollars.

That's not what I hear. Admittedly, I'm not 100% up to date on the minor details, but I have read numerous articles over the past 10 years about public school closures, and funds being redirected to private education. I think that even in absolute terms the amount of money in the public education system has been reducing significantly, and I can say with absolute certainty that the amount per-capita has been decreasing at an alarming rate.

I find it hard to fathom that there are people who are actually arguing that the Republicans are supposedly adding to public spending. Even Americans know that is bullshit.

The US has nearly 17,000 generators combining for a total nameplate output of more than a million megawatts, of which almost 11,000 are fossil fueled plants with nameplate capacities of about 825,000 megawatts. Converting that takes time, and at the moment, there isn't enough renewable capacity to even dent that

No kidding. You can't argue that there is little research because there are few solutions. The research is intended to produce solutions. Bush has scaled back research into renewables, just as Howard has done here in Australia, while rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and asserting the rights of the big energy companies to keep on polluting ... in the name of jobs of course.

including the Dept of Energy assisting with a non-PV solar plant in Southern California that will have a rated capacity of about 500MW

That's a token effort - a drop in the ocean at best. It really means nothing in the long run. We need to be doing this everywhere.

There has also been significant work done to smooth the process for getting nuclear plants approved, however, so with some luck, we'll be able to take a nice chunk out with that. It's not renewable (not in the conventional sense), but it's a lot more stable than wind and solar.

No it's not. There is enough uranium in the world for about 10 years of total energy consumption, and then you have millions of tons of radioactive waste that will be around for millions of years to come. Which company - or civilisation for that matter - is going to be around in millions of years to safeguard the world from this waste? Who will pay to maintain the containment? Not the companies that profited from it, you can be sure of that. And then there's the issue of the US breaking the non-proliferation treaty. I say that if Iraq and Iran deserve to be invaded to for

Re:This raises the question

[bar-agent]

Phaedo says things about the properties of the soul, but it does not attempt to determine whether there is such a thing to begin with.