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Of course, not all amputees are injured in the war. Take someone like Dan Witkowski, a skier. In December 2003 he went into the backcountry for a few hours of skiing. He went alone and did not tell anyone he was going. Five days later, a rescue team located him, delirious and nearly dead. He had frostbite and gangrene in both legs. But less than one year later he was skiing again thanks to technological advancements in prosthetics and a lot of spirit ("On resilience and optimism," 2005). Another example is Cameron Clapp, 19, who went to sleep on the railroad tracks after too much partying. He was hit by a train and lost his right arm and both legs just above the knees. A company called Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics fitted him with computerized legs that allow him to compete in track events ("A life without limits," 2005).

Because the war has produced so many injuries, there has been a surge of funding for prosthetics research. $73 million has been invested to develop new prosthetic arms by 2009. One project is developing a myoelectric arm capable of nine separate movements. Another project wants to build an arm that will move more like a real human one. Another research project is trying to develop an arm that can "perform 22 distinct movements in a coordinated fashion, even down to fingers that can tap the keys on a computer keyboard" (Aldhous, 2006, p. 27). The main problem is to make the prosthetic arm as strong as a natural arm would be because electric motors give only about 1/5th the power of natural muscle.

Researchers are also working on how to integrate the prosthetic with the patient's own nervous system so that he or she can control the prosthetic the same way as with the natural arm -- by thinking. A surgeon, Todd Kuiken of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, has developed an operation to