No Barriers

Patrick Kane needed a prothetic arm. Would he rather have one that looked quite natural, with real looking skin or one that was ‘machine beautiful’ with exposed titanium, carbon fiber, alloys, and the like. . Prosthetics have been around for 1000s of years. They’ve been found in Egyptian tombs. There’s a story about a German soldier who lost his arm in war, but that didn’t stop him from returning to the battlefield. He had a suit of armor made with a metal hand on it and he was known to be brutal. The phrase Ruling with an Iron Fist is sometimes attributed to that story. What about the ethics of prosthetics? Here’s simple question. Just because someone is missing an arm do they need to wear a prothesis. Do athletes with prosthetic limbs have an unfair advantage over able-bodied athletes? Patrick Kane was once known as the bionic teenager. He was one of the youngest people to ever be fitted with an artificial limb. He joins our host Erik Weihenmayer and guest host Billy Lister and they tackle these ideas a