Posted 1/19/2008

WHO ARE THE HANDICAPPED?

Who the handicapped are seems obvious.

The person in a wheelchair. A man pushing a walker. A runner missing a leg. A woman who can't get around without her cane. A man dying of congestive heart failure. A woman trailed by her oxygen tank.

A person physically less able than you and me.

It seems like a stupid question.

But maybe it isn't.

Maybe it is you and I, the normal, who are the real handicapped.

At least that seems to be the course science is taking.

Oscar Pistorius is a man with two prosthetic legs. Everything below both knees is artificial. Curiously, he is a runner. He's had been dubbed "the blade runner." He is a runner capable of blinding speed.

Not Paralympic Games speed. Real Olympic speed. He recently qualified to represent South Africa in the Olympics.

But world track officials won't let him run in the Beijing Olympics. It seems that medical research indicates that Pistori's artificial femurs, ankles and feet give him an unfair advantage over non-handicapped runners. A German researcher claims that Pistori's artificial femurs allow him to run with 25% less effort than runners using their original body parts.

Get this:

The handicapped runner is considered to have an unfair physical advantage over the non-handicapped runners.

So who are the handicapped in track?

At about the same time, scientists at The University of Minnesota announced success in experiments designed to bring dead rat hearts to life by injecting then with stem cells extracted from newborn rats. The dead rats' hearts in the experiment began beating again within eight days. Now it's on to pig hearts. If it works with pigs, it is highly likely to work with human hearts.

It isn't just a matter of saving those handicapped with defective hearts.

Think of all the athletes looking for better performances. If these guys and gals will shoot up with hormones which are eventually life-threatening, think how quickly they'll demand heart replacements with stem cells drawn from vastly superior athletes or their babies.

Experiments are underway to create computer-driven exoskeletons for the elderly who are confined to wheelchairs. This would allow them to regain a great deal of leg strength, making them potentially better than new. Soon they might all be in high polka mode.

The Army is in on the "help the handicapped" bandwagon. Of course, the Army creates its own handicapped by piling 120 pounds of equipment on the back of a 110-pound soldier. This results in a seriously handicapped infantryman.

So, instead of lightening the load (which makes sense to civilians), the Army is looking to science to create a computer-driven exoskeleton which would give each soldier enormous strength. Enough strength for him or her to carry large and heavy loads. The principle is drawn from insects, which have their skeletons on the outside.

But you can bet that the Army is looking further ahead. How about an exoskeleton-equipped soldier who can leap like a grasshopper? Or, say, a tree-hopping or a hill-topping brigade. Who would need helicopters?

Artificial hands are a major frontier for people who have lost limbs, or even those with hands rendered useless by arthritis. Think of your frail granny showing up with the grip of a desperate politician.

With all that's going on, we may have to discard the term "handicapped."

The future may be made up of the normal and super-normal.

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