There seems to be a fascination with "prosthesis" in this class, but the wikipedia entry for prosthesis (except for a thanks to Cristina and Louise's edit) is a total mess! I only got started cleaning it up. The seven "Celtiknot" edits are mine, limited to the intro and "Type" section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prosthesis&action=history
Much more could be done. I would like to spend more time on the "cosmesis" and "cost" sections - including changing those headings.
Revising the headings was an interesting exercise - I probably overdid it, but I felt that the initial state of limiting the Types to 4 kinds of extremity prostheses gives preferential treatment to biomechanical approaches to prosthetic technology without accounting for the amputees whose loss requires non-powered devices. This mentality marginalizes aesthetic (passive) devices as non-functional, and does a disservice to amputees who actually use their aesthetic devices as a passive assist. Even myoelectric wearers will use their devices 75% of the time (or more) as a passive assist. It also erases most of the amputee population: finger amputees account for about 88% or the upper extremity amputee population.
My blog post also focuses on the current issues around "cosmetic" as a prosthetic category, because of funding issues.
It is also worth thinking about the gendering of the prosthetic field: male/prosthetists/biomechanical/active-functional vs female/anaplastologists/cosmetic/passive-[functional?]
-Erin/drledford/celtiknot
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