Intrepid Fallen Heroes
There is a new state-of-the-art training facility being built at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, to rehabilitate our catastrophically injured military personnel. From what I can tell, and what I've heard, all the money that has been raised for this facility has come from private donors - there is no funding forthcoming from the government, nor Haliburton.
The site will also have Fisher Houses, which exist on nearly every VA medical center in the country to house family members who need to be there. Fisher Houses are privately funded as well.
I don't watch FOX 'news' so I don't know if they're talking about it, but MSNBC is, otherwise I would not have heard of it. So I'm spreading the word to you - if you want to support the troops, visit www.fallenheroesfund.org and at least check it out. I realize you probably haven't heard of it, so judge for yourself. 100% of the money received will go to constructing and equipping the facility; none of it will be used for administrative costs.
Please click the link. Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. You can afford $10, can't you? Just do it.
posted by Argent at 4:20 PM
4 Comments:
An interesting tangent is that recently in one of my lectures, we were discussing artificial limbs, specifically making ones that are more functional, such as recreating hands and such. The big problem is that while the mechanics can certainly fit into the relative small space of a human arm, getting the body to transmit messages to it, and receiving those signals, is rather difficult. Anyway, one engineer there had a rather nifty idea, which was to wire the fake arm not to the nerves, but to route it through the blood vessels and directly connect it to the brain. If that works (in other words, if a material that is cheap and doesn't corrode can be found and a successful route to the brain is possible) then you could restore amputees the full functions of their lost limbs.
The problem is that the wire used would have to be gold or platinum, as these are some of the only metals that resist being corroded, but obviously they are expensive. And people aren't really funding it that much, because they feel it's a pointless project if stem cell regenerative medicine is ever progressed to the point of usefulness. Of course, Lord only knows when that'll happen...
I wonder if that is being researched anywhere... surely it is.
Did you ever see the story about the special effects house that was making limbs?? They specialize in making corpses and body parts for close ups for shows like CSI and such... they decided to make limbs for soldiers and they recreate skin tone and freckles and fake hair - the whole nine yards. That was so awesome to me.
If only the entire country worked that way. People with special talents or embarrassing amounts of money contributing to people who really needed it. People who REALLY needed it. There would be no imbalance, no disparity of "wealth" and hope and happiness - you know what I'm saying?
Well, if everyone was like that, I think there'd still be an imbalance of wealth, but at least if everyone contributed to things like these, there wouldn't be a disparity of happiness, anyway. I think it's a lot like crime, you can reduce it as much as you want, but it's never going to be perfect zero, so to speak.
And part of the reason I'm trying to get a degree in biomedical engineering is because I KNOW I can do it, so I'm willing to take on student loans and such to reach that goal. Now, I'd be lying if I said that making more than minimum wage wasn't part of my motivation, but it's only a part, and frankly, I'd probably still be going for it regardless.
And I saw that crew! A lady who had to have her right eye socket removed had those people work on her face, and they put in a little floating glass eye and everything to make it seem good as new. Genius, in my opinion.
http://thatthing.diary-x.com/
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