Barbie doll body parts used in (human) prosthetic fingers. (I am not making this up).
This article was in the Naples Daily News on 11/30/99.
It said it was a reprint from The Raleigh News and Observer.
With a little help from the Internet, I found the article from the original Raleigh newspaper (the Naples newspaper's search function will not go back to 11/30/99).
**************************************
Sep 15 1999: Barbie parts with body part
Headline: Barbie parts with body part
Byline: Vicki Cheng
Source: STAFF WRITER
Text:
DURHAM -- Open the cabinets in Jane Bahor's office and you
will find body parts.
There's a drawer full of rubber hands that zip up at the
wrist, all different shades and textures. Little boxes lined up
along the walls hold fake ears, noses and fingers, along with
the molds that made them, should their owners ever need a
replacement.
And in another cabinet, some new additions: Barbie dolls,
smiling even though their legs have been cruelly slit in the
back, their plastic Barbie knee joints ripped out and put into
someone's prosthetic finger.
Bahor is an anaplastologist at Duke University Medical
Center, or someone who reconstructs body parts using artificial
but lifelike prostheses. She has Barbie to thank - or curse -
for all the media attention she has been getting lately for work
she has done quietly for decades.
Because she came up with the idea of using the inner workings
of Barbie's knees in place of stiff wire joints for people who
need prosthetic fingers, she's on television in Spain. Radio
stations in Australia want her on their morning shows. She's
getting requests from Japan and Germany. And in the United
States, she's been on national TV and in newspapers across the
country, including the supermarket tabloids.
"I was in there with JonBenet Ramsey and everybody," she
said. "It's so odd all the attention this has gotten from the
word 'Barbie.' "
She doesn't like dealing with reporters as much as she likes
actually helping her patients, but she sees the media frenzy as
an opportunity to get the word out that help is available.
"I had a call this morning from a woman who has had a finger
amputated for 30 years," Bahor said last week. "She didn't know
anything could be done for her. Anything that might reach some
folks - you almost owe it to the profession and the patients."
Bahor, 48, was born in Raleigh, raised in South Durham and
lived in Chapel Hill for 15 years before moving to North Durham,
where she now lives. She wanted to be an artist, took art
lessons starting at age 8, and was always good at copying other
images. But by the time she reached college age, she decided she
wasn't creative enough to make a living at it.
At age 20, she was working in the personnel department at the
Duke University Medical Center when an unusual opening came up.
Doctors in the facial prosthetics unit needed someone to do the
typing. But they also wanted someone they could train as a
medical artist, to help make artificial facial parts.
"They had a lot of trouble keeping artists because the
patients were so disturbing to them," Bahor said. "They sent me
home with some photographs. There were people with no noses, or
a big hole in the face because of the removal of a tumor."
She took the job.
"It's like God said, 'Bam! Here it is,' " she said. "I really
enjoyed working with the patients. I could look at their other
ear and copy it, or a picture of their nose, or their other
eye."
Bahor was making mostly facial parts - first out of plastic,
then out of silicone rubber - when a patient first talked to her
about needing a finger.
The patient was a social worker who caught her hand in a fan,
amputating her index finger. "This lady had a mail-order plastic
finger I was tinting," Bahor said. "They're really stiff, really
hard. She said, 'You can do better than this.' "
So 15 years ago she started making fingers out of rubber,
"and patients starting coming out of the woodwork," she said.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hands and
fingers are among the most often injured body parts involving
days away from work. In 1997 there were more than 154,000 finger
or fingernail injuries on the job, and nearly 5,200 injuries
involving hands and fingers.
Dr. Scott Levin, chief of the division of plastic and
reconstructive surgery at Duke and associate professor of
orthopedic surgery and plastic surgery, said there are thousands
of hand injuries treated at Duke each year.
Bahor has seen all kinds of accidents: Lawn mowers, farm
equipment, printing presses, saw mills and chicken processing
plants are often the culprits. People can lose fingers by
getting their rings caught on something. And that can affect
everything from a person's livelihood to his or her self-image.
"You're always looking at your hands," Bahor said. "Your
hands are the only things you see the whole time you're awake."
A missing finger can be a constant reminder of a traumatic
accident.
Andrew Ash was repairing a corn picker on his parents' farm
in West Virginia in 1996 when the tension in the machine
released, and the equipment caught his left hand. Doctors at the
University of Virginia in Charlottesville couldn't save his
pinkie, middle finger and index finger.
"My doctors at UVa didn't want to do any reconstruction,"
said Ash, who was a computer programmer before the accident.
"They said I was young, and I'd learn to cope. I didn't like
that answer, and I found Duke on the Internet."
Levin was able to take one of Ash's toes and turn it into an
index finger, Ash said. Then, after a bone graft provided
something to attach a prosthetic to, Bahor made him a new middle
finger.
"It helps in the healing process from the accident," Ash
said. "You don't feel like you're different."
He said the finger looks so real that a lot of people can't
tell it's prosthetic.
The finger is also easy to use. The little things make a big
difference.
"You can hold change in the hand, whereas before you had a
gap, and change would fall out," Ash said.
Ash is one of about 15 patients who have the Barbie doll
joint in their prosthetic fingers. The process works like this:
Patients dip their hands into liquid alginate, a material
dentists use to make teeth impressions. From that Bahor makes a
cast of both hands, a wax model of the missing finger using the
healthy hand, and finally a silicone rubber finger. The end
product is a realistic, hand-painted digit that fits onto the
hand.
Bahor inserts the inside of the Barbie doll's knee - two flat
pieces of tan plastic that pop together at a notched joint - in
the finger. She fills the finger with foam, to give it a
firmness.
She and a student at N.C. State University came up with the
idea after a brainstorming session about three years ago. They
mutilated Barbie dolls until Mattel Inc. heard about their work
and sent them a bag full of the joints.
The new fingers are lighter and much easier to bend than the
old ones with wire joints. Ash said he can change the position
of the finger by pressing it down against something or using one
of the fingers next to it.
"You can do it real easily and not be noticeable about it,"
he said. "That's what makes it nice, with the Barbie doll
joint."
Bahor's work first got noticed by the press in December,
through a friend who worked at The Herald-Sun in Durham. From
there it hit the Internet, the tabloids and TV shows. Bahor is
glad that word is getting out, though her patient load is
getting backed up.
"When things like this happen, you know it's not going to go
on for long," she said. "It's an opportunity to reach people you
know you may never have again."
She's been inundated with calls and letters from all over the
world, ranging from patients to radio show personalities to
children working on school projects.
The media attention is well deserved, said Levin, the Duke
surgeon, who called Bahor a hero of his.
"Jane is an absolutely brilliant artist and brilliant
anaplastologist," he said. "She's very committed to this very
demanding technical and artistic field. There are very few
people in the world that do it. ... All the patients love her."
Bahor is still trying to improve the Barbie doll fingers, and
she says her work is a constant struggle to achieve the
unattainable.
"You know you're never going to make anything like the real
thing," she said. "I just feel really inadequate in what I'm
trying to do to help them. The hand is so sophisticated."
End Text ****************************************
Art: photo
Cutline: With careful use of a hammer, Jane Bahor, an anaplastologist at
Duke University Medical Center, works on a Barbie doll knee
joint, such as the one below, that she will put into a silicone
prosthetic finger, right. The joint lets the finger bend. A few
Barbie dolls remain in Jane Bahor's cabinet, but toymaker Mattel
is now sending the necessary parts in a bag, ending the need to
cannibalize the dolls.
Copyright The News & Observer Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved 1999 |
