Medicine: Back to Life

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Roy Campanella will have plenty of inspiring examples of a rehab axiom: if the patient wills it, nothing is too tough. Rusk's team techniques, 80% usable by individual doctors as well, have returned even quadriplegics to busy lives. A Bolivian boy, born without legs or arms, now paints, plays, walks and attends school with artificial limbs. A leading Southern cotton broker, made quadriplegic in an auto accident, is back running his business twelve hours a day, even goes deer-hunting. In San Diego last week, a group of seven such people emplaned for a precedent-setting tour of Europe, their itinerary mapped by a new organization called Wings for the Disabled. A similar group of 20 will fly from New York to Europe next week. Says ebullient John W. Sharp, 30, a San Diego polio victim who got the idea after wheel-chairing across Europe last summer:"Next year I'd like to see an African safari for the handicapped. I honestly think we could do it."