The Weekly Loop - Prosthetics #2

Today, we look at the accessibility and finance gaps in the prosthetics industry, and how some individuals took initiative in their communities.

Transcript

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It seems that celebrities and large corporations have a lot more in common than what was originally thought, because on July 31st of 2026, NPR News released that Google actually paused their AI satellite image feature because of their fear of deepfakes in the sky. Now, as funny as it does sound that the one time you do open up Google Earth, you see Florida turned into a CSGO map, it does point the finger at the larger issue at hand. Because not only does this violate Google's internal policies which then harm our own user health and safety, but also because Google imagery is so crucial to verifying breaking news and atrocities in hard-to-reach parts of the world, this could have potentially horrifying consequences. So while we use creativity in fields such as the STEM and prosthetics fields, it's important to understand that there's severe boundaries that must be set in place for where we draw the line. Welcome back to the feedback loop. We have a big anchor story and also a cluster of smaller ones that point at similar problems from different angles. We're going to be looking at the accessibility of working prosthetics and the workarounds when the system doesn't deliver. So let's get into it. Starting out with a story of Richmond, Virginia that CBS6 points out on July 28th, Gavin Yans is 13, and three years ago he was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, bone cancer in his right leg, and went through 14 rounds of chemo and rotation plasty, which is a limb-sparing surgery that let him keep some function while removing the tumor. He came out the other side wanting one thing, to play baseball again. Here's where it gets frustrating. His insurance covered a standard walking prosthetic, but it did not cover the specialized one he actually needed to run and swim and play the sport that he loves. That's not a coverage gap by accident, because a lot of insurance plans in the US specifically define medically necessary as whatever gets you through a normal day, not whatever gets you back into your life. So Gavin's family joined a campaign called So Everybody Can Move. And Gavin himself went to Virginia General Assembly to testify for House Bill 216, which would require certain insurance plans to cover activity-specific prosthetics. According to the CBS 6 piece, 15 states have already passed similar laws, and the campaign's goal of 28 states by the 2028 Paralympics. Now here's the part that connects this to something bigger than just one kid in Virginia. This same week, Massachusetts State House News Service, this ran through WWLP on July 30th, reported that Massachusetts House added its own version of this bill, H4549, to its calendar. It expands coverage for prosthetics and orthotics for people with limblots and actually defines terms like custom orthotic device and prosthetic services in state law for the first time, which sounds bureaucratic but matters a lot. Because right now, insurers can lean on vague definitions to deny claims. If that bill name sounds familiar, so everybody can move, it's because it's the same campaign, and it's the same idea we mentioned the last episode when we talked about the Everybody Can Move Act. This isn't one state doing something isolated, it's a coordinated state-by-state push, and it's actually working. 15 down, 13 to go. Staying on the insurance note for a second, but this time from the totally different corner of the prosthetics world. PBS News Hour ran a piece on July 24th, part of their Canvas series, about ocular prosthetics, artificial eyes, and it's the same medically necessary problem showing up in a completely different body part. There's an ocularist in Portland named Christina Leitzill, who's become known for what her clients call fun eyes. Most of her work is in the stand is still the standard version, a custom acrylic shell built to match someone's natural eye as closely as possible. But increasingly, people are asking for the opposite. One woman in the piece, Rachel Yi, who lost an eye to cancer as a toddler, now wears a gold iris instead of a matching one. Her reasoning was pretty direct. For years, she's felt like this matching eye existed to make other people comfortable looking at her, not to make her feel good about herself. Light Souls also made prosthetic eyes as memorials, a cat eye pattern for someone's late pet, a painted portrait of someone's deceased wife. Now here's the part that relates to the insurance angle. And it's basically identical to the Gavin Yan story. A standard prosthetic eye runs two to ten thousand dollars, and that's often covered. A custom fun eye is not, because it's classified as cosmetic rather than medically necessary, even though by every account in this piece, it's the version that actually helps people, especially kids, deal with the psychological side of losing an eye. A 12-year-old named Gracie Corrigan, who'd been bullied over her eye not quite matching, raised money for a custom one and ended up starting something called the Fun Eye Fund. A small nonprofit now helping other families cover this same cost. It's the same as previously mentioned, just a sl on a smaller scale, because the system will pay for the version of a prosthetic that restores basic function, but not the version that restores confidence. And confidence, especially for children and at a young age, isn't really optional. It's more of a necessity. While that legislative fight plays out state by state, some people aren't waiting on it. Two stories this week, both about young designers who looked at the cost problem and just built their own solution. First, at the National Scout Jamboree on Glen Jean, West Virginia, WVNS covered this on July 30th. A scout from Iowa named Benjamin Lothimer designed his own prosthetic hand. He got the idea back in 2023 after meeting the Medal of Honor recipient LeRoy Petrie, who wears the prosthetic arm. Lothimer says upper body prosthetics can run $50,000 to $80,000. His design costs under $500. He's on the third version, working on a fourth, and his stated goal is pretty direct. Anyone can make something cheaper that's worse, he says. So that wasn't the point. He wanted it to actually work. Second, over at the UK, the University of Brighton puts out a piece on July 27th about a graduate named Will Goddard. His project is called Footprint, a low-cost 3D printed prosthetic designed specifically for children. And the problem he's solving isn't really about the device itself, it's about timing. Children who need lower limb prosthetics often need a new one every three months because they're growing. But standard processes, assessment, fabrication, and fitting as well can take up to six weeks. So a kid spends more time in a prosthetic that no longer fits them than one that does. Goddard design can be scaled from a small number of measurements, and he says it can cut that weight from six weeks down to about seven days. Neither of these is a finished market ready product yet, but put them next to the insurance story and you can actually see the shape of the problem in the industry. It's not that technology doesn't exist, it's that the systems around the technology, whether that's insurance policy or manufacturing timelines, are built for the average case, not the individual one. A scout with a 3D printer and a university grad with a design degree are, in their own way, both responding in the exact same gap. Shifting gears slightly, this one's not about the prosthetic itself, but it's about the tissue underneath it. Research at the Kyushu University, in a study published on July 24th in Scientific Reports, identified a compound called LAS that appears to protect and boost a protein called HGF, which is what tells the body's stem cells to start repairing damaged muscle. Here's the mechanism briefly. As we age, HGF can get chemically altered through a process called nitration, and once that happens, it's basically it basically can't bind to its receptor anymore. The research compared it to a rusty key that no longer fits its lock. When they tested LAS on the protein, it did more than just protect it from that damage. It roughly doubled the protein's ability to bind its receptor compared to an untreated version. They also tested it in mice with muscle atrophy and saw the same protective effect. And if you think about it, muscle health around a residual limb matters enormously for how well a prosthetic actually performs, for the socket fit, for signal quality in a meal electric device, for basic comfort during use. A lot of amputees deal with muscle atrophy in the residual limb over time, especially while they age. This research is very early, but if a compound like this eventually holds up in humans, it goes beyond just the limb, and it's also about the longevity of its connection. Now on to the next one. WRAL reported on July 22nd that a prosthetics company out of Kinston, North Carolina, East Point Prosthetics and Orthotics, flies to Africa on humanitarian trips to fit amputees with prosthetic legs for free. On this trip, the team was supposed to give out legs to 17 people. Their luggage got separated across a rebooked flight during a storm delay, and by the time they landed, two bags were missing. One turned up too late to matter, the other, nine prosthetic legs worth tens of thousands of dollars, is still missing as of the report. It's a small, almost mundane failure, a lost bag, but the outcome was 17 people who've been told that they were getting a leg and then weren't. The company's already planning another trip in November, regardless of whether the bag turns up. I bring this one up because everything else in this episode is about systems slowly getting better and better, better law, better design, and better biology as a whole. This is a reminder that access can still come down to something as unglamorous as airline connection. So on another angle, we have to also improve the infrastructure as a whole so that prosthetics are not only equitable from the price angle, but also through the accessibility angle. No one person is getting left without a helping hand. Researchers at the University of Illinois, in work published in the Journal of Food Science and covered by Science Daily on July 29th, may have figured out how to make French fries healthier without changing the taste. The core problem with frying is that as the potato heats up, water inside turns into vapor and escapes, and that creates negative pressure that sucks the oil in behind it. Their fix is a hybrid fryer that uses microwave energy to heat the potato from the inside out, which raises internal pressure and keeps more of the oil out while still finishing with a conventional fry to get the crispy exterior. Across their tests, the hybrid method cut both cooking time and oil absorption. Not exactly a societal breakthrough, but a nice reminder that food science is quietly chipping away at the problems most of us think about every time we're standing in a fast food line. So if there's a through line this week, it's this Axis prosthetics isn't really one problem, it's the same problem wearing a lot of different goats. It's a legal and financial problem, which is what's happening in Virginia and Massachusetts, and that's what's happening to families paying out of pocket for a prosthetic eye that actually helps their kid feel normal. It's a design and a manufacturing problem, which is what a scout and a design grad are both independently trying to solve. It's a biological problem, which is what the Kyushu University research is chipping away at. And sometimes it's just a logistical problem, a missing suitcase standing between 17 people and a leg that already exists. None of these fixes work alone. A law without affordable devices doesn't help anyone. A cheap device without insurance coverage leaves people still paying out of their pocket. Progress here looks less than one big breakthrough, and more like all of these pieces slowly lining up at the same time. That's the show. If you want to track the insurance build we mentioned, for example, so everybody can move, keeps a state-by-state list on their site. I'll catch you in the next week. Share this with a friend that you think might enjoy this show.