Tennessee man's bionic arm provides hope for soldier amputees

DAYTON, Tenn. -- Jesse Sullivan has two prosthetic arms, but he has no problem climbing a ladder at his house and rolling on a fresh coat of paint.

Sullivan's also good with a weed-whacker, bending his elbow and rotating his forearm to guide the machine.

His motions are coordinated and smooth because one of his artificial arms is a bionic device controlled by his brain. He thinks, "Close hand," and electrical signals makes it happen.

Doctors describe Sullivan as the first amputee with a thought-controlled artificial arm. Millions were spent on the technology, and a researcher says the retail price would be about $100,000 for a pair.

But doctors have asked Sullivan not to go easy on his experimental arms.

"When I left, they said don't bring it back looking new," Sullivan said with a grin, his brow showing sweat beneath a fraying Dollywood amusement park cap.

Most artificial arms today aren't much better than the clumsy wooden prosthetics from a century ago. Artificial legs are simpler, but it has been nearly impossible to recreate the subtle and complex motion of a human arm.

Sullivan's thought-controlled bionic arms represent a real advance. The U.S. government, spurred on by the growing count of soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan, is spending millions of dollars and working with universities and private companies to develop artificial limbs that connect body and mind.

Sullivan said he's proud to test the bionic arm for soldiers who lost a limb in combat.

"Those guys are heroes in my book, and they should have the best there is," Sullivan said. "Hopefully they have got 60 or 70 years in front of them."

The U.S. Army Medical Command says that, as of July, 411 members of the U.S. military in Iraq and 37 in Afghanistan had wounds that led to amputation of at least one limb.

The military's research-and-development wing -- known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA -- wants to develop a mechanical arm that mimics the real thing by 2009.

DARPA gave The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., a $30.4 million contract to start the first phase of the four-year project. A team of 35 government agencies, universities and private firms hopes to deliver an early prototype by December.

"We're excited about collaborating with the military and hope to be able to use this technology on our soldiers," said Dr. Todd Kuiken, director of neuroengineering at the Center for Artificial Limbs at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, one of the partners in the DARPA project.

Sullivan lost his arms in May 2001 working as a utility lineman. He suffered electrical burns so severe that doctors had to amputate both his arms at the shoulder.

Seven weeks later, due to what Sullivan calls being in the right place at the right time, he was in the hands of Chicago researchers connected to the DARPA project.

"Jesse is an absolutely remarkable human being, with or without his injuries," Kuiken said.

Sullivan says his bionic arm isn't much like the one test pilot Steve Austin got in the '70s TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man." "I don't really feel superhuman or anything," he said.

His grandchildren, including 4-year-old Luke Westlake, are used to getting hugs from Paw-Paw's bionic left arm and his simpler right arm, which is a motor-operated limb with a hook.

"It's not magic," Luke said.

Kuiken developed the "muscle reinnervation" procedure that is key to the bionic arm.

For Sullivan, it involved grafting shoulder nerves to his pectoral muscle. The grafts receive thought-generated impulses to move the left arm and hand, just as a normal arm would.

"The nerves grow into the chest muscles, so when the patient thinks, 'Close hand,' a portion of the chest muscle contracts," according to an institute fact sheet.

Kuiken and Gregory Clark, associated professor of bioengineering and prosthetics researcher at the University of Utah, describe the procedure on Sullivan as the first time such a graft has been used to control an artificial limb.

Clark said a conventional prosthethic limb is "limited in a number of ways in the types of movements. Moreover, it can do only one of those movements at any particular moment."

He said a natural arm is capable of 22 discrete movements. The bionic limb is capable of four right now, although researchers are working to make them better.

"Four is wonderful," Clark said.

Kuiken's technique allows more than one movement at a time. Sullivan said his bionic arm allows him to rotate his upper arm, bend his elbow, rotate his wrist, and open and close his hand -- some simultaneously

There's still no sense of touch in the prosthesis, but Clark said researchers are working to change that.

Sullivan said sometimes he's so rough with the bionic arm around the house that it has broken, including once when he pulled the end off starting a lawn mower. That prompted researchers to make changes that have improved it, he said.

"The hand on the bionic arm will open in any position," he said.

Sullivan said he has good days and bad days, but he's not the kind of person to sit around depressed. He can hold a fork to eat, but hasn't mastered casting a fishing line -- at least not yet.

"I do all the yard work," he said. "I take out the garbage."

Sullivan's wife of 22 years, Carolyn, has to help her husband sometimes, but she doesn't see herself as a caretaker because of the freedom the bionic limb allows him.

"It just didn't seem that hard to adjust," she said. "For some reason, we just sort of rolled into it. I just knew he wasn't going to let anything keep him down."

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On The Net:

Research Institute of Chicago: www.ric.org/bionic