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Star Wars Prequels Medicine Technology

Star Wars-Style "Bionic Hand' Fitted To First Patients 72

Posted by samzenpus from the that's-quite-a-grip dept.
schwit1 writes "Three Austrians have replaced injured hands with bionic ones that they can control using nerves and muscles transplanted into their arms from their legs. The three men are the first to undergo what doctors refer to as "bionic reconstruction," which includes a voluntary amputation, the transplantation of nerves and muscles and learning to use faint signals from them to command the hand. Previously, people with bionic hands have primarily controlled them with manual settings."
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Star Wars-Style "Bionic Hand' Fitted To First Patients More

Star Wars-Style "Bionic Hand' Fitted To First Patients

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  • 1973... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @05:00PM (#49131235)

    What is this âoeStar Warsâ you speak of? The Six Million Dollar Man perfected this technology in 1973.

    • Re:1973... (Score:5, Funny)

      by superwiz ( 655733 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @05:02PM (#49131263) Journal
      Star Wars took place long, long time ago. So what is this 1973 you are talking about?

      • Re:1973... (Score:4, Funny)

        by Shadow of Eternity ( 795165 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @05:10PM (#49131373)

        yeah but it was in a galaxy far far away and we don't recognize their medical literature.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Eddy_D ( 557002 )
          Did not really think of it until now, but if Star Wars happened a long long time ago and in a Galaxy far far away then we should be seeing some battle action in our telescopes aaaanyyy second now...
          • Actually, the light from the events in question reached us and were recorded on film to be released to the public with added dramatization scenes for a better narrative in 1977, 1980, and 1983. Unfortunately, the initial events that alerted our scientists to these epic space battles could only be documented and not captured on film due to limitations of technology at the time. This led to the events being reproduced roughly 20 years later instead of being a live broadcast, leading to a degradation in the

      • Re:1973... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @05:19PM (#49131475)

        Star Wars took place long, long time ago. So what is this 1973 you are talking about?

        Wrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong.
        The quote is "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....".

        • Star Wars took place long, long time ago. So what is this 1973 you are talking about?

          Wrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong. The quote is "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....".

          But along, long time ago...
          I can still remember
          How that music used to make me smile

        • Everything that's happening now is happening now?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          How many library-of-congress's is two far's?

    • Star wars is a terrible analogy anyway. The movie depicts a direct replacement for an amputated limb, which isn't quite what's going on here. If you read TFA, what these are being used for are people with nerve damage that basically amputates the limb internally while still leaving an intact limb. They repurpose nerves from elsewhere to replace the function of the damaged ones, then amputate the useless limb and replace with a mechanical one hooked up to the repurposed nerve groups. Presumably the amputee t

      • No, that's not how it works. Tissue is fungible. A nerve from your foot implanted in your arm doesn't magically keep being connected to your foot, it behaves like some cat5 moved around. They just try to move their hand like normal and based on what happens the brain adapts over time.

        • I think that cat5 analogy is exactly what I said wasn't it? If you move a cat5 from one server to another, the switch port associated with server1 is now associated with server2 and you're going to have confusion until the MAC table on the switch updates.

          My understanding of how the brain works is that there's a spiral shaped region where most of the upper motor neurons run to and each location where one terminates is mapped to some location on the body. Without brain surgery, what was formerly the "toe" ne

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward

            No. You're thinking they pulled one end of the cat5 out and plugged it in somewhere else, while leaving the other end in place. That's not the case here; they pulled both ends of the patch cable out, and used it to replace a faulty one elsewhere, if we must stick with the structured cabling analogy.

      • Star wars is a terrible analogy anyway.

        True, there were no automobiles in Star Wars for a proper car analogy. Land-speeders, sure, but no cars.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Minwee ( 522556 )
      The Star Wars hand doesn't make a "doot doot doot doot" sound all the time.

  • I like seeing real progress in technology. Although, I think the idea of giving an artificial limb a skin color just adds to the uncanny valley. If I were to ever need such an implement, I would ask for a version that would look stylish, however not colored like a hand. It doesn't really fool anyone, and it actually would make someone stare more, vs. a Sliver or Black model. As their brain will not try to figure out why this dead hand is moving.

    • I'd want the model with a transparent skin and casing, so everyone can admire the intricate mechanisms inside.

    • Re:This type of technology makes me happy. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @07:57PM (#49132899) Homepage

      It doesn't really fool anyone, and it actually would make someone stare more, vs. a Sliver or Black model. As their brain will not try to figure out why this dead hand is moving.

      I take it you haven't actually ever seen a good prosthetic limb, then... ...or you have, but didn't know it.

      As the saying goes, you can fool all of the people some of the time, and that's what prosthetic devices are designed to do. The fellow diner lifting his glass to drink, or the empty hand of a pedestrian walking down the street, or the passenger on the opposite seat on a bus... How often do you actually look at their hands long enough to consider how perfectly their skin color matches your expectations? Do you interact enough with them to notice how their skin folds?

      Common situations like that are where a more obvious skin color brings even more staring, questions, prejudice, and pity. Current skin doesn't work well enough to fool someone who's looking, but for most common occurrences, it's close enough to be ignored, and that's the desired reaction. Silver or black will have every child (and many adults) pointing and staring, which is usually not so desired.

  • Really? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They used "manual" settings? Handy!

  • The Six Million Dollar Man predates StarWars and bionics, m'kay.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • The technology's great - something that I feel was inevitable, yet still a tremendous breakthrough.

    That being said, does no one proofread anymore?

    Following amputation, surgeons had to wait three months for the limbs to heel before they could be fitted with the new prosthetic.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      Obviously the limbs couldn't be fitted with prosthetics until they had stopped moving.

  • But scientists in Austria have performed the first ‘bionic reconstructions’ on three men in a breakthrough which has allowed them to carry on with their daily lives and careers.

    Well, as well as one can carry on when they're more machine now than man, twisted and evil.

  • We've been following the development of this sort of technology here on Slashdot for a long time for sure. In fact, I find this area of research and development to be among the most fascinating of our time and am course always glad to see people getting help from them. However, I won't be truly impressed until someone can peel the Orange away with the bionic hand using nothing more then the same part of our brain that we would use to control that function in the first place. Perhaps the next time a story li

  • "Previously, people with bionic hands have primarily controlled them with manual ..."

    OK, got that, we can't have 'manual' stuff with hands.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      Sounds as useful as a solar-powered flashlight.

      • Many realism-emphasizing prosthetic hands are little more than flexible wires inside a synthetic skin. Controlling the position of the prosthetic fingers means reaching over with the other hand and adjusting them.

        In other news, I have used two kinds of solar-powered flashlight. One was a lantern with a battery inside, so a few hours sitting in the sun (like on the bow of a canoe) provided several hours of light that evening. The other was a home-built contraption for getting a bit more light inside a cabin

  • I'm curious to see how often they have random people tell them they're their father, or ask them if they can lend a hand. It might not be that many, if they can also crush bone with their bionic hands.

  • Star Wars? (Score:3)

    by rebelwarlock ( 1319465 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @12:04AM (#49134169)
    Yeah, the bionic hand is great and all, but what in the actual fuck does it have to do with Star Wars? Besides the one throwaway sentence at the start of the article, nothing. Fluffy bullshit is bullshit. Here's a better link (to a PDF) from The Lancet:

    http://press.thelancet.com/bio... [thelancet.com]

    No more page views for clickbaiting whores from Telegraph, please.

  • Use the insurance, Luke! (Score:3)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @12:25AM (#49134257)

    Expensive this new prosthetic will be.

  • I have a relative that could use something like this, I hope it becomes affordable and readable for them soon.

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