Article: Merging Man and Machine, The Bionic Age

Image of a mechanical arm from a National Geographic article


The cover story to the January 2010 issue of National Geographic is an article about how bionics, or “the study of mechanical systems that function like living organisms or parts of living organisms”, is being used to help people with limited abilities and handicaps, due to accident, genetics or age. In addition to a very nice slideshow, the whole article (maybe?) is available here. The following is a small clip…

Four years ago an automobile accident robbed Amanda Kitts of her arm and the ability to do things most of us take for granted, like making a sandwich. “I felt lost,” the teacher from Knoxville, Tennessee, tells writer Josh Fischman in this month’s cover story on bionics.

Then Amanda met Todd Kuiken, a physician and biomedical engineer who knew that the nerves in an amputee’s stump can still telegraph brain signals. He fitted her with a bionic arm. Bionics is technology at its most ingenious and humane. Most of us first encountered the word in science fiction books or television shows like The Six Million Dollar Man. In that 1970s series, pilot Steve Austin is injured in a crash. His rebuilt body, which includes a bionic arm, eye, and legs, is nothing short of superhuman.

But the bionics of modern medical engineering has little to do with enabling someone to run at 60 miles an hour or use an eye like a zoom lens. It is more about the quiet miracle of holding a fork or seeing the silhouette of a tree. It’s about allowing people like Amanda to reclaim what they’ve lost.

A year ago Ray Edwards, a quadruple amputee, was one of the first people in the United Kingdom to be fitted with a bionic hand. When he flexed his new hand for the first time, he cried. “It made me feel I was just Ray again,” he said. The restoration of one’s normal self is a powerful gift.

There’s also an interactive section about bionics and current advances in prothetics relative to specific body parts.


Just an added note: In the slideshow, there’s a picture of Kitts laughing as her prosthetic arm squeezes a bottle of mustard. Frankly, it’s a pretty awesome photo – and, I definitely find much more joy this photo than I do of that other photo of Jenny McCarthy squeezing a bottle of mustard in a bikini. (Not added, but easily found if you search.) Anyway, if Kitts ever sees this post, I hope she’ll appreciate my comparison between her and her bionic arm, and McCarthy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.