Daisy: This is Lusie. Lusie doesn’t have a left forearm -
she was born that way. Normally if Lusie wanted to get a prosthetic arm,
it would cost thousands of dollars. That’s a lot of money for something she’ll outgrow in a year.
See this bucket of purple goop? Lusie is about to stick her arm in there to
get fitted for a new prosthetic device. this one will cost her parents thousands of dollars
In fact, they don’t even need to buy it. No one does.
All they have to do, is print it.
I’m Daisy Rosario. I’m on a mission to find tomorrow. But today,
my journey leads me to a scout retreat.
Here in Maryland, an unlikely group of boys and girls are helping make affordable prosthetic devices a reality.
Daisy: So what are you getting ready to do?
Sarah: Right now, we’re just getting the printer ready to start a print.
Daisy: This is Sarah, one of these renegade scouts.
And right now she’s showing me how to use a 3D printer.
Sarah: Ok, and it’s saying it will finish in about 20 minutes
Daisy: There it goes.
Daisy: And this is Connor. He’s a senior patrol leader.
Connor: Alright guys how many of you have you seen these before
or something like them? Woah, okay,
a lot of you guys. So can I hear what they are?
Anonymous: They are prosthetic hands. Connor: They are prosthetic hands.
What was that? From a 3D printer. Absolutely.
This is a youth run retreat so the Scout leaders can essentially talk about
whatever they want .
Today they're talking about how to print hands for kids like Lusie
and while interest amongst the scouts is quickly growing they can't possibly keep
up with the demand themselves
Every year, roughly 1000 babies are born missing all or part of a limb in the US alone.
these scouts are part of a worldwide network
of volunteers
with help coming in from youth group schools maker spaces
and basement laboratories and if you ask any of those people who's behind
this global operation, they'll all point to a research scientist
at RIT name Jon Shull.
Daisy: How did you find your way to this?
Jon: You know, about 26 months ago.
Instead of preparing a class I was looking at videos on YouTube… and
I came across one about a South African carpenter
who had a shop accident and accidentally cut the fingers off one hand,
and was told that partial hand prosthetics
are really expensive and hard to come by
He went to Google and he found his way to Ivan Owen,
a puppet maker and prop maker in Washington State
ho had made a great big mechanical hand
controlled by fingers as a great big puppet for a movie scene.
And together they worked for over a year designing this
hand and he explained that they’d eventually come upon a way of 3D printing this device,
that they’d eventually come to recognize that this device could be helpful not
just for people who
and fingers chopped off in a wood shop but
for example, for people born missing fingers and hands.
And he mentioned that the was putting the design online. YouTube video comments
are typically the most demoralizing literary genre in the history of mankind. In this
case, there were a number of people who said this is really great what this guy is
is doing I would do that, and so I called their bluff.
Daisy: Jon created a simple map, and left a youtube comment of his own.
Volunteers with 3D printers quickly started to show up.
And not just a couple… a lot. So now, if someone like Lusie needs a hand,
her family can check Jon’s map and find someone near them who can make it.
In other words... It worked.
Daisy: What started with Jon’s map has snowballed to become a worldwide network called e-Nable.
While medical-grade prosthetics can cost many thousands of dollars,
the e-Nable network makes arms for about forty five dollars worth of materials,
and delivers them to children in need at no cost. These devices are completely
mechanical
using movement from the recipients existing limbs to allow them to grasp
objects
It’s not a perfect solution, but e-Nable is constantly refining it.
Jon: Lusie, I think this is the one you had at home right. Interested in showing us what you can do with it?
Daisy: Lusie has been working with Jon for over a year now to help develop a new model
of 3d-printed arm for the e-Nable network.
Jon: And did that come out? Let’s see, what’d you do?
Lusie: It came out.
Jon: It came out!
Lusie: No, I was pushing it in.
Jon: You’re right, you’re right. Ok so that’s… there you go you did it.
That’s something we can fix. We’ll call that the Lusie bolt. Ok, we’ll work on that…
Daisy: Currently, e-nable can produce
and iterate on its devices without government restrictions.
but even if that doesn't last forever, momentum is on Jon's side
Jon: Our real mission is just to get these innovations
into the hands of everyone who needs them every which way we can
while we're in this window of opportunity.
Daisy: So far, e-Nable has delivered hands in 37 countries and recently received a
six hundred thousand dollar grant from Google.org
E-Nable plans to use this money to reduce production costs from $45
to $25 and give away 6,000 devices in the next 2 years.
But Jon thinks hands and arms are just the beginning.
Jon: This general internet collaboration scheme is almost certainly going to lead to
participatory medicine, advances in
nutrition and pharmaceuticals. And I think it really means that there’s a new era
of crowd science and technology that is really gonna change
things in a very exciting and democratizing way.
Daisy: So, what started as a YouTube comment turned into an inspiring
philanthropic efforts
the 21st century and if that's possible well
why stop there?
Daisy: What would you like to see next? Is there anything else you’d like to be able to do?
Lusie: A cartwheel, and...
um...
I want one that shoots out candy.