Edward Willett

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Joint replacement: what’s a nice joint like you doing in a dame like this?

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology." So began each episode of The Six Million Dollar Man. Twenty-some years after that TV series aired, we still don't have bionic people capable of superhuman feats of strength and speed, but we do have lots of people walking around with artificial parts: especially, artificial joints. My own "bionic Mom" is among them; she has two artificial knees and, as of last week, an artificial shoulder. A joint is formed by the ends of two or more bones connected by thick tissues. Some are basically hinges, like the knee; others have a ball-and-socket construction, like the hip. In a normal joint, the bone ends are covered with a smooth ...

Posted by Edward Willett at 0:20, November 18th, 2002 under Blog, Columns, Science Columns | Comment now »