BLEEX is a Development of Military Importance: A Cure for Spina Bifida? Mindfully.org Email Response 6may04

BLEEX is a Development of Military Importance Not a Cure for Spina Bifida - Mindfully.org Email Response 6may04

----- Original Message -----
From: <XXX>
To: <XXX>
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 6:52 PM
Subject: Mindfully.org contact form

Title: Mr
First Name: XXX
Last Name: XXX
Address1: XXX
City: XXX
State: XXX

Comments: While reviewing an article on Janes.com, I copied and pasted The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX) into Google, and came to your site [http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2004/BLEEX-Exoskeleton11mar04.htm]. My question is:

Are there any projected uses for BLEEX in non-ambulatory applications? A good friend has a daughter born with Spina Bifida who has been confined to a wheelchair her whole life. The prospect that BLEEX might one day allow her to walk is just...amazing.

Thanks for your time.
[signed XXX]

I understand the desire to help all the disabled people, especially those who may be close to us. But the first order of concern should be why the disorder happened in the first place. And why is it that this sort of thing is on the increase along with many types of cancers.

I attended a panel discussion last week that Ray Kurzweil was part of, albeit via the internet. He is the inventor of optical character recognition and voice recognition software, as well as numerous other high profile inventions. One point of logic that Kurzweil sprinkled frequently through any of his turns at the mic was that we must continue to develop all these technologies for the sake of "all the thousands cancer patients in the world." When it was my turn during the Q&A period, I stated that I am a cancer survivor and that I would much rather have not had cancer than have been "cured." I also told him that when one considers the human and environmental health effects from all this technology that is supposed to be saving us, we see that it's the technology that is creating the cancers it is supposed to be curing.

To say that spina bifida is the problem is missing the point. Spina bifida is a symptom not a problem. Of course it is a problem for your friend's daughter. The real problem is all the pollutants in our lives. And we in the industrialized world live in a soup of them. Even those in the far regions are feeling the pollution from the industrialized nations.

I guarantee you that BLEEX is very much a pearl in the eyes of the military. And much like the Hummer, it will be marketed heavily to consumers who can afford it.

I see this all as just one more step in separating us all from nature. It's quite sad to me that most people think this is progress. The very word progress needs to be redefined because it doesn't include a realistic view of all facts surrounding it. A true tally would include more items than have been thought about on this project. That disabled people will be able to use this is quite like saying that the US is bringing democracy to Iraq. It is but a cheap ploy, playing our heart strings.

Don't get me wrong. I feel incredibly bad when I see or hear about people who have spina bifida, or any number of maladies that are becoming so prevalent. But remember I told you I had cancer? Well, it wasn't through any amount of technology that I am still here. It was the blade of a highly skilled surgeon. More than a decade after going through biannual and then annual tests for cancer returning to my system, a doctor in a different state told me that the testing I had done for all those years wasn't done at his hospital because a study had shown that they were of little value and that the human hands can feel more than all those tests. And I even verified that because just a few weeks after having one of those tests, I had a tumor the size of a golf ball show up. It took a lot more time than that to develop and didn't even show on the tests worth thousands of dollars.

Furthermore, I know now that the chances are very high that it was the effects of technology, or put more directly, it was some byproduct pollutant that caused my cancer in the first place.

I wish your friend's daughter well. But here's another thought. She would be one of less than 0.1% of the spina bifida patients that could afford a BLEEX outfit.