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What happens when doctors set out to design a children’s practice that would eliminate the child’s fear behind the injury and/or illness and give children a sense of empowerment? This idea morphed into a superhero-themed pediatric practice, fully decorated with life-sized statues, memorabilia, and artwork. The OsteoCorps was born.
The premise behind the OsteoCorps was its creator, Dr. Steven Cyr, and his life-long desire to eliminate injury and disease. Its main characters, the mentors of the OsteoCorps, are comic-book versions of Dr. and Mrs. Cyr.
Characters Ian Cision and Ann Cision (puns for Incision) are researchers who have devoted their entire lives to formulating a serum that can reverse or prevent injury and illness. The story begins with the successful creation of the Genesis serum and how it accidentally transforms the Cision children into superheroes.
The idea is to teach children about their conditions and the science behind the source and treatment of each condition without it being obvious.
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Dr. Cyr conceptualized every character personally, their powers, arch enemies, and battles based on injuries, illness, and treatment of the muscular and skeletal systems. The idea is to teach children about their conditions and the science behind the source and treatment of each condition without it being obvious. He wanted to create unique characters imbued with special powers that were in line with those needed to treat their injuries and disease states with an ultimate hope to inspire our youth to seek further education in the STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Medicine) subjects while making learning fun and interactive.
Conversely, each villain from the MalUnion (a pun for the term malunion which means a broken bone which has healed resulting in a deformity or a crooked limb), a league of bad guys controlled by their leader, FraXure, is imbued with powers of destruction and disease. The spin on the so-called “bad guys” is that all but the two corrupt leaders, FraXure and Vertebro, are actually friends or relatives of the Cisions who have been given a poisoned version of the curative Genesis serum.
Dr. Cyr wants to make sure that children don’t feel like being injured or having a disease makes them bad or mutated, but merely sick. His characters all have distinct strengths as well, which forces them to work as a team to affect healing and to become victorious over the MalUnion and disease as a whole. By using this approach, the OsteoCorps will use knowledge to empower injured or ill children, thus giving them a voice and positive representation.
Ultimately, it’s a battle between health and illness (good vs. bad) but in an entirely new frontier, incorporating technology to make learning exciting, interactive, and easy to conceptualize. There are several formats intended to accomplish the ultimate goal of increase the US’s standing in the world regarding subjects such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine.
It’s a battle between health and illness but in an entirely new frontier, incorporating technology to make learning exciting.
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In the stories, the characters can adjust their cell sizes and thus, their bodies, to be nanometer-sized or normal sized. They can fight inside the body or in the outside world. Children gain a clear view of the inner workings of the systems of our bodies, the scientific explanations and applications of medicine, biology, biomechanics, engineering, and mathematics to understand how these subjects all tie into the function and repair of the ultimate machine, our bodies.
It teaches them to assimilate knowledge of different subjects in a seemingly, real-world application while having the protection of being a virtual experience. The battles are limitless as are the types of cells and diagnoses facing humans.
These battles begin within the musculoskeletal system but will likely eventually spread to other systems of the body, relaying how each system functions and interacts with one another. Characters such as Captain Osteon, Fusion, and Cobalt Chrome form the core of the OsteoCorps. They are the Cision’s children morphed into adult versions of themselves with super powers but can readily transform back into children. They are joined by friends and family, whose powers are complementary and whose ethnic backgrounds are diverse, pointing out how the world’s success is intimately related to teamwork embracing diversity. They battle “bad guys” like FraXure, Vertebro, Slipped Disc, Liz Thesis, D’Formity, SkullyOsis, and CoreOshun. The story is unique. The medical terms are informative and empowering.
Edutainment has never been more exciting, and Steven J. Cyr, M.D. is the visionary who made OsteoCorps happen.
A version of this post was originally published on OsteoCorp.com and is republished here with permission of the author.
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Photo credit: OsteoCorps