So lame argument number one, for example, the one that I cannot get over is in baseball you are allowed, if you're a pitcher, to replace your ulnar collateral ligament Bionic ligaments for our software engineers so they can code faster.
And it's a really clever bit of kit. It's a bionic eye, and it allows people to see some quite rudimentary things. But when you're visually impaired, it is pretty game-changing.
Today, I think women have a large number of role models and examples of how successful women can be. and to BioNTech. And what we are now beneficiaries of are because of her effort.
I was invited to speak. It was like on my bucket list of things to do. And I got to hang out and have dinner with one of the bionauts. Yes, they are called biionut. And they all wore beautiful red jumpsuits like space explorers when they went in. And they also told me that the only room inside the biosphere that was
It's wireless. But it's going to continue to pump insulin in her body even if she doesn't need it, because it doesn't know. And so the bionic pancreas brings all this intellectual power, and helps it understand, well, if the blood sugar is dropping, I'm going to shut the pump off. Fighting the FDA to help them understand that this is how the technology can work was a big challenge.
It's not a political conservative media bias, but it's one towards entertainment. And so the word bionic is used a lot, the words dexterous and manipulation are also used a lot, which have very specific meanings in robotics.
I think there's something interesting in that. It's a bit like the bionic eye, that you think that the progression of accessibility options and this sort of technology is just going to get better and better.
They actually changed their name, but they're still on our website registered as both C-change Foundation and Alliance. And we also have the Biona Creek cleanup projects. So if you're feeling very motivated, I'm sure you are after that, then definitely sign up.
Thank you. It's good to be here today. And we also have Laura Biondo, the freestyle football artist. Hi. Thank you. We have Rudy Janecek, the amazing juggler that you just saw.
He was born without a left hand. He has one of the most advanced bionic arms and hands in the world. I said, Bertolt tell me how do you control your arm if you need to fix it.
that we are not there yet. And we do not have bionic people. And these hands are for the most part right now, I think that it would be fair to say, at least in terms
philosopher uh writes this about marriage promises he says when I make a promise I bear Witness that my future with you is not locked into a bionic Beam by which I was stuck uh with which I was stuck through the Fateful combinations of x's and y's in the hand I was dealt with out of my parents genetic
Some of them have become friends. Mr. Carlo d'Asaro Biondo-- I don't know if you know him. And I know that these ladies, these gentlemen-- maybe because they have the head in the new world
You didn't interview Sergey or Larry. And Dean Kamen invented the segway and the bionic pump and the iBOT electric wheelchair and the insulin pump and the Slingshot water purifier.
and how we make sense of it. That boys wanted evil-- so you can see when they did Bionicle that there's dark and red and blood and death.
And I think I was looking around for a better way of describing myself. And there are other injured soldiers out there who describe themselves as bionic or cyborgs or differently-abled. And they all didn't quite work for me.
And just to finish that story, there was a bionic eye. And in the book, I look at bionic eyes a bit. But it's called Argus II.
And I might mention two groups. One is a group in San Francisco at a company called Ekso Bionics who, Lara, I know you will probably have an interest in because they're building robots with artificial intelligence built into the system.
encouraging me, "Go, go, go" as he was electrocuting my spine. And then I walked over a million and a half steps in my Ekso Bionics robotic legs. So we found these world-class competitors.
I've seen all kinds of things. Like, could it be a robot or bionics? Like, is there a limit to how far you would apply technology in service of the performance?
through this process of testing this new medication over the course of two years. And she was the first pediatric patient at Mass General Hospital to try the bionic pancreas, which is what you see here. She's actually wearing four continuous glucose monitors that they were testing across her stomach, and the IV pole she's attached to
So lame argument number one, for example, the one that I cannot get over is in baseball you are allowed, if you're a pitcher, to replace your ulnar collateral ligament You can swap it out, bring in the bionic ligament, extend your career, be able to the throw the ball harder.
you soon realize you're part of a system of systems that is quite fragile. And just to finish that story, there was a bionic eye. And in the book, I look at bionic eyes a bit.
the activity the sensory activity in and the motor output, but using the nervous system, not just stimulating the muscles. So we started to get to know these two groups, Ekso Bionics and the scientists at UCLA, led by a visionary scientist called Reggie Edgerton. And I know it's all a little bit abstract, so perhaps I'll show you a video to show you what kind of impact
So I have a dream. This is what I said to your Paris colleagues, d'Asaro Biondo and his colleagues.
and it's being tested at diabetes camps in Massachusetts. And FDA is saying that by 2017, we're likely to see an approval for the bionic pancreas, or a version of it. And so again, we followed her lead.
It doesn't get any easier. So even though she was willing to try these drug trials and she was trying the insulin pump and she was trying the bionic pancreas, every day pricking her finger 8 to 10 times a day, having to count carbohydrate in everything she puts in her mouth-- she doesn't
And that roller coaster we were right in the middle of. And yet, we knew from having been in Washington that the reality of getting a bionic pancreas was years away. And we needed some more hope.
And that's because he's become best known for his work giving people's pets bionic limbs-- prosthetics that are permanently implanted into
By 10 years from now, the first people with bionic eyes will be here.
just hear it, it sounds right, and it makes it through. So that's on me. In my Bionic Ability hand review, I talk about
Yeah. And I think you touched on it there. But you do raise this really interesting point in your book about there's the integration of the person with the technology, whether it's prosthetics or a bionic eye, or what have you. But then you are additionally connected to this wider network of things.
In fact, it still is, as I'm still sitting here in my wheelchair. But the exciting thing was we find Reggie and his team at UCLA, we found the team at Ekso Bionics, and we started to work with them. And you saw me, hopefully, in the video there, lifting my left leg up as a guy called Yury Gerasimenko was
like the polar explorers were doing geographically 100 years ago. Well, I mean, if I just talk about the team at Ekso Bionics, I was one of their early enthusiastic test pilots.
And we agreed to co-chair this particular year because one of the things that we had discovered when Elle tested the biologic pancreas was that the regulatory environment for approving these devices was so unclear that industry was saying they were no longer going to be investing in the advancements with the bionic pancreas, because the roadmap for approval was very gray.
And so this particular Congress was dedicated to advocating with the FDA and other agencies in Washington to create a regulatory pathway that industry could see that would ultimately ensure if all these boxes were checked, we could get to a place where the bionic pancreas could be approved. And again, I say this because one of the challenges is you live with risk every day, right?
And so I couldn't so easily just push it aside. We went home from this Congress on high, feeling optimistic that the FDA was going to create a road map and that someday very soon Elle would have the bionic pancreas. But we were also living with the reality that every day was still so hard.
One of the leaders in this field is a British veterinary surgeon named Noel Fitzpatrick, and he is sometimes known as the Bionic Vet.
Right, right. And I think the answer to that question is, again, it comes back to the problem. There's a whole branch of engineering called bionics, and they look