The Hype and Hope of Prosthetics

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When 60 Minutes did a piece on us, someone they interviewed said, “Our hands are part of what makes us human,” and somebody responded in an online comment, “Oh, so you're saying that somehow amputees are less human?” But I think there’s some truth to that perception. In the Star Wars series, amputation seems to relate the continuum of good and evil across generations. Luke is missing an arm, and Darth Vader, his father, is actually missing all of his limbs. So Luke has a piece of this lack of humanity that is nearly complete in Darth Vader.

It becomes a metaphor for dehumanization…

Exactly. You see it in Captain Hook in Peter Pan, and you could argue that that’s what demonizes the bad guy in The Fugitive. That’s something I’m interested in and haven’t done much with. I just think it’s interesting how amputation in popular culture is used as a symbol for a lack of humanity.

You should write more about that. You could have a whole new career.

(laughs) I’m going to finish my Ph.D. in engineering first.

One last question. You write in IEEE Spectrum that "the greatest revolution of all may be apparent only after the frenzy of research spending on prosthetics has evaporated." Why after?

My belief is that perhaps the greatest challenge is not the technical challenge, but actually how it gets delivered to the consumer. And some of that is beyond the scope of the [Revolutionizing Prosthetics] project. If we lay the groundwork for future innovation, then that itself is the achievement. And, if it succeeds in making all of the innovations in the future possible, well, then you could argue about when did the revolution occur. Did it occur when you created the infrastructure that made it possible, or did it occur when it actually happened? I don’t know. But, I think the most important thing we can do is create an environment where innovation can occur, in this vacuum where it hasn’t occurred for so long.

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