Woman Wants To Replace Her Non-functioning Hand With a Bionic Prosthesis 171
erice writes about the case of Nicola Wilding: "Injured in crash which damaged the nerves in her arm, she has reached the limits that can what be accomplished with nerve transplants. She can move her arm but doctors have given up hope of restoring use of her hand. So she wants doctors to amputate the hand and replace it with a bionic version that does work."
The doctor, Oskar C. Aszmann, first performed a similar operation last year.
Sounds good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the comparison she gets to make. Her options are a human hand that doesn't work, a hook, or a "toy robot hand." She doesn't get to wait for future technologies that might never come to apss.
An exoskeleton would be better. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had a nonfunctioning hand, I think I'd be happier with an exoskeleton, because it would be easy to install and uninstall. It's much more difficult to unamputate a hand.
Re:Sounds good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly! Same reason you should wait to buy your next car... flying cars are just around the corner, until then, you can take the bus.
Re:Bad comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you ever stop to think that she spent 12 years waiting for "future technologies" and that a bionic hand is just that?
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
We think we have all this "technology" but we are really only good at a few things. Burning fossil fuels in a turbine, mass-producing items and putting transistors on a tiny chip so we can play video games
Really? That is how you sum up all of human endevour? We have come so far and acheived so much since we came down from the trees. We have sent space ships out beyond our solar system, and explored the depths of the ocean that would crush a man if he ventured that far down. We can repair our bodies in extrodinary ways that were unheard of even 50 years ago. Doctors can use robots to perform surgery on people half a world away. We can make a robotic hand for someone. We made the world a smaller place by allowing us to talk to each other anywhere we want. We made Jersey Shore.
OK, we still have a long way to go, but why not see that as an exciting opportunity rather than bitch and moan that we haven't invented everything yet.
Why can't we fix a few grams of living matter? Because we aren't nearly as clever as we think we are.
Do you really think that the doctors in this case are so deluded that they think that they can fix this woman's hand? Obviously not, otherwise we would not be talking about fitting a bionic hand. Do you think the woman thinks that we are so clever that we can fix her hand? Obviously not, otherwise we would not be talking about fitting a bionic hand (again).
So who is it that thinks we are more clever than we really are? Not the people in the story. Not the people posting here. I know that it is certainly not you. You are too busy seeing the negative in everything around you. Maybe you are just still bitter that we don't all have flying cars like the old science fiction stories promised you when you were a child.