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Technology
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HEALTH: | What’s a mad scientist to do with herself these days? She can go legit in the high-tech artificial body parts business. Already, researchers have begun crafting shin bones from coral, hearts from rare metals, and faux skin from the tendons of cows. The industry of alchemically creating new organs and bones is booming and the most resourceful 鈥 or hubristic 鈥 bioengineers even claim to have improved upon the original designs. Mother Nature, after all, is only human. Titanium Shoulder The Bi-Angular Bi-Polar Shoulder is a titanium mechanism that apes the joint’s full-circle rotation using an Escher-like system: a ball inside a socket inside another socket. Richard Worland, a joint-replacement surgeon in Richmond, Virginia, created this contraption after his own football-injured shoulder began to deteriorate. The damaged joint comes out, says Worland, and “we Coral Replacement Bone Bad bone breaks are an occupational hazard for athletes. Just ask Picabo Street. But until now, fixing them has been largely a matter of casts, pins, and prayer. Enter Pro Osteon coral bone filler. Confected by Irvine, California-based Interpore International from dead coral, which is made of virtually the same minerals as bone, the sterilized “porite” can plug gaps left by Mechanical Nose Artificial noses, used by scores of industries and government agencies to test products, are generally the size of home entertainment centers and cost about $50,000. But Cyrano Sciences Inc. in Pasadena has developed a fake proboscis that, it promises, will be little bigger than a cell phone and only $5,000. The Cyrano nose can detect everything from baking bread to smoke to Electrical Heart Pump Country music’s greatest nightmare: a heart that won’t break. Impervious, too, to age and triglycerides is the Ontario-based World Heart Organization’s HeartSaver. A minuscule 500-gram vessel made of titanium and polyurethane, it’s stitched to your ticker, cranking out a steady heartbeat thanks to a belt-hung battery pack and two metal coils that transfer electricity to the Synthetic Skin Frankenstein science at its best, Integra artificial skin is a two-layer membrane system, one made of cow tendons and shark tissue, the other of silicone. Used on burn patients, Integra (made by a Plainsboro, New Jersey, company of the same name) allows the deepest layers of skin to regenerate; no more agonizing bandage-changing. Anyone who’s suffered road rash will be pleased Prefab Muscle Twice as strong as human muscle and with a more glossy sheen. The Artificial Muscle Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, bakes synthetic silk for five hours, then boils it in sodium hydroxide to make a polymer-gel artificial muscle. Still awaiting F.D.A. approval, the muscle could conceivably be grafted onto bone or sewn into garments that will stretch and contract |
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