Wheelchairs for Haiti

[kestrell]

Posted to the LezAbility mailing list
Survivors of the Haiti earthquake need rugged
wheelchairs capable of traveling on devastated streets.

With an estimated 200,000 killed in the catastrophe,
many thousands more have injuries with which will
make walking impossible.

Emergency relief workers say Whirlwind's RoughRider
wheelchair is "ideal" for Haiti after the earthquake.

We need your help today.
DONATE HERE: http://www.wheelchairsforhaiti.org/

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

If anything is ideal in that devastation, the Roughrider is it -- they're designed for unpaved roads. They're also designed to be maintained and repared locally with readily available parts.

[kestrell]

This was one one of the topics I was hoping to bring up during the prosthetics panel at Arisia: how real prosthetics offer differ from those fancy chip-enabled prosthetics being rolled out of American research labs, because real people in most parts of the real world have limited financial and technological resources for maintaining such prosthetics. Seriously, this is one fo the issues that I feel most geeks just don't get; I'm thinking fo writing a post called "Real Prosthetics for Real Cyborgs."

Would you consider a wheelchair a prosthetic?

[jesse_the_k]

Do the essay!

(There's a lot of useful info at the Whirlwind Home Site, including academic papers written by folks analyzing just why charities which fill shipping containers full of used depot wheelchairs to send to the poor cripples is a Really Pointless Thing. In fact, there's an entire political economy there, since US insurers (private & state & federal) refuse to pay for used wheelchairs, so the ones we first-worlders realize are insufficient feed the food chain.)

As far as "prosthetic," I'm not familiar with Mitchell, Synder & Davis on the topic in terms of lit-crit theory. My working meaning has been "assistive technology that attaches to the body." But after The Body Has a Mind of Its Own book, I realize just about any assistive tech will be incorporated into our body maps, so the distinction between a socket, an implant, a CI on the one hand and a hand-held cane or a butt-fitted chair is pretty much nil.

[kestrell]

Yes, I've come tot he conclusion that whether you call your tech a prosthetic basically comes down to another self-identifying moment, especially as so many able-bodied people seem resistanct to seeing any of the devices they use/have integrated, as prosthetics, but instead always view prosthetics as soemthing that will happen in the science fiction future, and of course, will often be voluntary. At least, that is what I got from the many allusions made to tats and body piercings during the prosthetics panel at Arisia. I've been wondering hwo far intot he future that SF world might be, where medical care is such an incdiental concern that people would casually agree tot he thousands of dollars involved in most prosthetics and the thousands more invovled int eh operations that typically prepare bodies for prosthetics. I figure a century from now but I've also noticed that, on many SF convention panels, access to basic medical care does not seem to be a concern to the majority of panelists, and no one ever want sot discuss the economics of prosthetics, or who has access to that care. ONe thing I found out during my prosthetic research is that far more people in this country have to get prosthetics due to loss of limbs related to diabetes than those who have had war-related amputations.