Something really wild just happened: scientists grew a rat leg from bone and collagen in a
petri dish, and it could change prosthetics forever.
For most of human history, a prosthetic limb was a piece of wood or metal roughly shaped
like a hand or leg.
Even through the 19th and 20th centuries, prosthetics were mainly designed to look like
our natural limbs, whether or not they functioned like them.
But we’re now in a renaissance of prosthetic engineering, with devices that can do everything
a natural limb does — and sometimes more.
One of the early models in this new wave were Cheetah blades, first worn by Aimee Mullins
to compete in track and field at the NCAA level. Made from carbon fiber, they harness
and release energy generated by each step a person takes, like a pair of springs. These
are what Oscar Pistorius ran on them at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Engineers have also built legs for extreme sports, like mountain biking or skiing.
There’s also bebionic — often called the “Terminator” hand — which has different
grips and gestures that can be controlled by the flexing of various forearm muscles.
Other engineers are working on something even more amazing: prosthetics that can be controlled
by a user’s mind.
These typically work with electrodes implanted in the brain. Through training, people can
learn how to activate specific brain areas that correspond to particular movements.
Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital call the rat arm creation a biolimb. They
say it’ll be at least a decade until we might do this with human arms. But already,
we’ve gone from Jaime Lannister to Luke Skywalker — in less than a century.