A MAN on a mission to cure paralysis believes we will all soon be using robot technology to help keep our ageing bodies going.
Blind adventurer Mark Pollock has been working with the best scientists on the planet in his goal to find a cure for 60million people in his lifetime.
Pollock, who was paralysed in an accident in 2010, says he longs for the day when he can spontaneously open his front door and go out alone.
And he said: “It will happen.”
The Commonwealth games medallist, 45, has used the €2million raised by the Run in the Dark bid to fast-track a cure for paralysis — to act as a “guinea pig” to test out developing technologies.
Thanks to a pair of robotic legs and electrical stimulation of his spinal cord, the first blind man to trek to the South Pole has been able to get out of his chair and on to his feet.
ONLY THE BEGINNING
It is, he believes, just the beginning and Mark reckons we will all be leaning on robot technologies to keep us mobile as we age.
He told the Irish Sun: “I would say it will evolve from wearable technology (like his robotic legs) to implanted technology combined with some biological intervention.
“The way I think of it is, medicine is going in such a way we’re living longer and longer yet our bodies are failing.
“What we’re experimenting with, I’m like a relatively young, old person living to 100 and my body has already failed, but what I see is all of us eventually will be wearing soft robotics.
“We’ll have implants, machine interfaces and we’re just at the early stages in this group of 60million.”
And while we’ll be using technology to help frail bodies keep up with sharp minds, he added: “And of course the flip side too, if bodies are intact I think technology is coming to help our brains as well.”
BACK IN ACTION
Pollock is not a man who has just hoped for a miracle.
For 16 months after his accident, getting from the hospital bed to his wheelchair was as good as it got.
He said: “It’s very clear to me that life is very much worth living in a wheelchair.
“Lots of people live full and meaningful lives and I accepted the reality but felt I needed to explore the hope side, to try and contribute to creating a cure.”
Mark did one and a half million steps in the robotic legs from 2012, movement powered by his knees and hips.
He said: “Combining electrical spinal stimulation and the robotic legs to pick up the slack and get me out of my chair.
“It’s not a cure but will be part of the package, a cocktail of interventions will ultimately produce a cure.
TRAINING ZONE
“Whenever I’m walking I can voluntarily move my legs, my heart rate goes up to a running training zone and I’m using my paralysed muscles.
“The important part from a training perspective is when I do more with my legs, the robot intelligently does less so there’s a training effect.
“They’ve been able to build robots for years but you don’t want the robot to be doing everything. You want it to do less as you do more.”
After five years as a guinea pig, it became apparent technology wasn’t the problem, nor was money, but getting all the best brains to collaborate was crucial.
Mark explained: “There’s enough imagination, money and desire in the world to get it done — the question is how you get all of these brilliant competitors to work together.
“We need competitors but they have to collaborate to find the breakthrough. Our role is to find the people with the ideas and money to build that network and support them to work together.
“60million people have some form of paralysis. It’s a question of when, not if, we find the cure. The timeline will be too long for many, but we will get there.”
LUCKY MAN
Pollock only lost his sight aged 22 and was just 34 when he was paralysed, but has no doubt he’s a lucky man.
He said: “If you got a spinal cord injury at the end of the Second World War you just died. That was it.
“Ludwig Guttman who started the Paralympics said well if you turn people then they won’t get pressure sores, won’t get infected and if they get fit they might have a chance of going back to work.
“But that was just keeping people alive, it’s really in the last 35 years there’s been any momentum and only the last ten years products have started to come out. I’m lucky. I’ve particularly decided to go down the cure route.
"I’d only raced to the South Pole a year before my accident so if I only treat this like another expedition — set a goal, put a team together, raise the money, turn up and train every day I could contribute in that area.
"With that and Run in the Dark helping to fund it I’ve had this great opportunity and with that comes an equal measure of responsibility to try get some of this technology out of the lab and available for other people.”
- THIS year’s Run in the Dark takes place on November 17 — more info at www.runinthedark.org.
3Mark is eager to use all developing tech to beat paralysis
