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As we write the introduction to this volume, the media reports on a dispute between athlete Oscar Pistorius and the International Association of Athletics Federation. Pistorius, whose legs are amputated at the knee, is running on carbon-composite prostheses developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the 2007 South African Senior Track and Field Championships, Pistorius came second in the 400 metres. The Federation is deliberating whether his prostheses gave him an unfair advantage over the able-bodied runners against whom he was competing. The director of the Biomechatronics Group at MIT, Professor Hugh Herr, himself a double amputee, observes that ‘in the next decade we will have artificial legs that are better than human legs for running’. He for one, it is reported, would not swap his prosthetic legs for ‘natural’ones. 1 This is a remarkable example of the contemporary …