well, I'm back! (oh you know you missed me).
& to get thing rolling I found this interesting tid bit online at msnbc.msn.com/id/22646083/
after you give that the once over come back & tell me what you think. for me its not that cut & dry. I worked with a security supervisor who is a below knee amputee & when he 1st got the job he ended up haveing to take medical leave for the purposes of having his stump operated on.
security involves very long hours of standing on your feet & his stump would start to throb like all hell after a while, from standing on his artifisal leg.
so even tho these "cheeta blades" (which BTW sound f*ckin awsome), give extra grip traction & need less energy to run, it could be argued that there are certain advantages to having real legs that the Cheeta's don't offer.
so the question for me becomes "do the advantages out weight the disadvantages"? disccusion?

Considering the complete loss of feeling, I doubt the advantages are worth it...

<Is too lazy to go check anything out without a link put into my mouth.

mmmmm, maby. the complete loss of sensation can be both an advantage as well as a disadvantage. at the end of the articule it stated dude was disqualified from a race because he drifted out of his lane.
So that might seem to suport your theroy obout having no feeling being a drawback. but! consider this. No sensation not only means poor control over the finer points of nerve motor control, but it also means no pain from mussle ware such as the kind caused by Lactic acid build up.
& with training, pratice, & time, that whole "poor contro"l thing could be over come. also let's consider that this is a man that will never know the pain of a sprained ankle, broken toe, charlie horse in the middle of the night from training so hard, or the time & effort of weight training the lower extremities of his body.
all dude will ever need to keep handy is a Philips head screw driver to tighen up his bolts after each work out or run.

Speaking as someone who experiences pain 24/7, and has a mother who has lived with pain 24/7 since I was four, I can certainly understand the benefit of not feeling pain. I don't think it's worth losing all feeling, though...

yeah but the point of the tread is to discuss weather dude has an unfair advantage over regular runners.
yes he might experince pain associated w/being an amputee, but does that out weigh or make even his having these "Cheeta Legs"?