A Personal Call to Prosthetic Invention

In the article, "Personal Call to a Prosthetic Invention" published in the New York Times on July 2, 2008, the author Max Morse, talks of a man named Van Phillips. Phillips was injured in a water skiing accident in 1976 and his left leg was severed below the knee, forcing this former athlete to wear a wood and plastic prosthetic leg that limited what he used to be able to do. He then wanted to create a better prosthetic leg, so he became a student at the Northwestern University Medical School Prosthetic-Orthotic Center. There he realized that prosthetics had changed little since World War 2 and were concerned about looks rather than the elastic energy storage that typical human legs have in the tendons and ligaments, that allow humans to run and be active. So after he graduated and was working at the University of Utah in biomedical design, he developed a prosthetic made of carbon graphite that was in the shape of a C. Allowing him to jump and land, by storing elastic energy in the prosthetic when it bent, like a diving board stores elastic energy when it is bent. Upon the development of his prosthetic he founded his own company and began redesigning and manufacturing his "flex-foot", which was mainly used for running, but was so significant because it gave people their lives back and allowed them to do anything someone not disabled could do. Allowing those missing limbs to do amazing things like climb Mount Everest, run the Boston Marathon, and complete Ironman triathlons, all thanks to the prosthetic leg Phillips invented. In addition, it has allowed amputee's to do something unheard of, be competitive in the Olympic trials, and possibly be able to compete in the Olympics, so long as the Olympic governing body finds no advantages to having prosthetics over a human leg. I thought this was just so incredible, that amputees had the possibility of being athletic and doing the things typical people think of as normal, when I would always see people with prosthetics hobble or have difficulty walking. In addition, if I was an amputee I would feel so defeated if I could not do the athletic things I used to be able to do, and it makes me think and want to create some orthopedic that could change people's lives and give them back something that is life changing, like the ability to walk or run again.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/sports/olympics/02cheetah.html