Proving that even the darkest cloud can have a silver lining, one positive aspect of having tens of thousands of young men and women lose their limbs needlessly in Afghanistan and Iraq is that advancements in prosthetics are coming along by leaps and bounds (sorry). In some cases, improvements in prosthetics have resulted in artificial limbs that outperform the original limbs in some kinds of performance. This recent Fast Company article talks about the explosion in prosthetics research (sorry again), and the expectation that the business side of orthotics will see growth from anticipated needs from not only wounded veterans, but also from the ever-increasing number of diabetics, who may require replacement limbs as they age. Neatorama had this post featuring an R&D company that has developed a significantly improved artificial foot, and the tech news site Next Big Future recently had a post about a whole “exoskeleton” mobility frame. Already the question of whether prosthetics enhance athletic performance has had to be taken under advisement by the NCAA, and is an ongoing debate in the sports world even beyond college athletics. For now, the Paralympic Games are a separate event from the traditional Olympic Games, but the time is foreseeable where prosthetically-enhanced athletes may compete at the same level as normally-abled athletes and demand inclusion in those sports.
