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ParaQuad News • Issue 1 Autumn 2016
latest news
Last month Lego unveiled its
first wheelchair user mini-figure at
the Nuremberg and London toy
fairs. The figurine boasts a young
individual, wearing a beanie and
jeans. It is part of a new set of 15
mini-figures created for Lego City,
Urban Residents.
It comes almost a year after a
social media campaign began
pushing the toy maker to ‘think
outside the brick box’ and
represent people with disabilities.
Lego was accused of a lack of
diversity in its mini-figures, with the
Toy Like Me campaign launching a
petition for the company to include
mini-figures with disabilities— the
campaign collected over 20 000
signatures.
Toy Like Me co-founder
Rebecca Atkinson said, “Lego we
salute you! You’ve just made 150
million children, their mums, dad,
nans, grandads, teachers, carers,
pet dogs and hamsters very, very,
very happy! We’re conga-ing up
and down the street right now,
(the hamster is at the back) flinging
multi-coloured bricks like confetti!”
Despite the millions of
children with disabilities, until
now they have barely ever seen
themselves positively reflected
in the toys they utilise.
The set will be on sale in
Germany from July.
Lego unveils
first-ever
figurine in a
wheelchair
Toby Price winsmotorcycle race,
3 years after breaking neck
Toby Price became Australia’s
first Dakar Rally champion when he
won in the motorbike category of
the 2016 Dakar Rally. The 28 year
old from Newcastle finished
39 minutes, 41 seconds
ahead of Slovakian KTM
team-mate Stefan Svitko.
The Dakar Rally is
infamous around the
world and challenges
the resilience of riders
and drivers through the
South American landscape. Price
said that being the first Australian
to win the Dakar rally was ‘just
insane’. It came just three years
after breaking his neck in another
motorcycle accident.
Price broke his neck competing
in the fourth round of the 2013
AMA Hare and Hound National
Championship: the 28 year old
broke his C6, C7 and T1
vertebrae, leaving him
close to paraplegia.
When Price was
hospitalised he was told his
insurance would not cover it
and that he would have to come
up with $500,000 for the surgery
that he needed.
Price left the hospital in a halo
brace and got on a 14-hour flight
home to Australia to successfully
have the surgery.
‘Bionic spinal cord’ to be
tested in humans
Melbourne researchers are soon
to implement their first human trial
of a revolutionary device that may
one day help paralysed people walk
again. The minimally invasive device,
the size of a small paperclip, is a
brain machine interface — a bionic
implant that translates thought into
action.
The new ‘bionic spinal cord’ is a
device implanted in a brain blood
vessel. It won’t reactivate limbs, but
the person’s direct thought may be
able to control equipment that can
move the limbs.
The pre-clinical trial results show
the device is capable of recording
high-quality signals emitted from the
brain’s motor cortex, without the
need for high risk open brain surgery
and has been shown in pre-clinical
animal trials to move limbs through
an exoskeleton, a mobility assist
device, or to control bionic limbs.
The lead author and neurologist at
The Royal Melbourne Hospital and
research fellow at The Florey Institute
of Neurosciences and the University
of Melbourne, Dr Thomas Oxley,
said;
“We have been able to create
the world’s only minimally invasive
device that is implanted into a blood
vessel in the brain via a simple day
procedure, avoiding the need for
high risk open brain surgery.”
The concept is similar to an
implantable cardiac pacemaker;
the first human trial will involve
three people and begin at the Royal
Melbourne Hospital in 2017.