I went to Popular Mechanics’ Breakthrough Awards last night with pretty low motives: a chance to schmooze with some of the editors who pay my rent. Maybe I’d grab a beer or four in the process. Instead, I walked out uplifted by one of the most inspiringly cool stories I had heard in months. It came from the night’s final honoree, MIT media lab professor Hugh Herr.
As a kid, Herr was a lousy student and good rock climber — a very good rock climber. Then, in 1982, he “became stranded on Mount Washington, New Hampshire for nearly four days in –20 F temperatures and blizzard conditions,” one biography notes. “Severe frostbite damage took its toll on his lower legs, and both of his feet had to be amputated six inches below the knee.“
Improbably, Herr swore he’d climb again. So he became a bookworm, eventually winding up in field of prosthetics. He developed a knee that “adapts to the users walking style, adjusting resistance to allow for a secure, agile gait,” Pop Mech observes. “Next, he plans to distribute sensors beyond the knee to allow the device to move in response to subtle electrical changes in muscles nearby.“
Herr is already helping out soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he is making good on his promise, to get back to climbing. In fact, he says, his new artificial legs are better than his old biological ones. Special wedge-like “feet” allow Herr to slide into cracks in the rock face that he could never use before. For ice climbing, Herr can slip attach spiky crampons to the end of his prosthetics. Or he can use Inspector Gadget–esque extending legs for extra reach.
In school, Herr told the crowd of a hundred or so at the American Museum of Natural History, he kept raising his height an inch a day, to see how long it would take for people to notice. “It took until I was about eight feet tall,” he laughed.
Standing on that stage, hopping around on his man-made legs, eight feet seemed like an understatement to me.
Prosthetic Prof Climbs New Heights
Previous post: Rapid Fire 9/30/05
Next post: Wanted: AUSA
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Mr. Martin, was wondering if you were familiar with DARPA. Having recently attended DARPATECH 2005 in Anaheim, one of their “DARPA-Hard” projects is to design a prosthetic replacement for the human hand that in their words, “would be able to play Brahms, NOT chopsticks”; “that could sense heat and pain” or “that could allow a hero the chance to hold his baby daughter”. It would be interesting to get Hugh in touch with an Army Col LEE who is in charge of this project. Thanks for the article and Semper Fi! Dave sends.
The suggestion that Dr Hugh Herr was a “very good climber” when the Mt Washington/Great Gulf incident took place is up for debate. Because of Dr. Herr’s stupidity, and refusal to accept sound advise from experienced mountaineers with on the ground knowledge of winter climbing conditions on that mountain, a very brave volunteer Mountain Rescue Services member, Albert Dow, lost his life looking for Herr and his equally foolish companion.
While Herr’s contirbution to medicine is commendable, some of us will never forget the conditions we subjected ourselves to during the rescue of Dr. Herr. We will forgive, but will never forget Albert’s unselfish act looking for another “lost goofer” in the Cutler River Drainage and Great Gulf Wilderness.
I hope Martin’s brave new world or bioethics does not include the standard world of reading a contract before you sign. Give Special Forces some credit to their intelligence.
I guess Martin’s brave new world of bioethics does not include the standard world of reading a contract before you sign. Give Special Forces some credit to their intelligence.