Saving Down syndrome

A New Zealand Initiative

Saving Down syndrome.

 

CALL FOR PAPERS for the International Journal of Disability, Community & Rehabilitation (IJDCR): What Sorts of People Should There Be?

CALL FOR PAPERS

                                      for the International Journal of Disability, Community & Rehabilitation (IJDCR)

What Sorts of People Should There Be?

 Guest Editor

Gregor Wolbring, Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, Dept. of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary 

 

 

 

Throughout history, people with non-normative abilities have been judged. Sometimes this judgment led to positive consequences, however for the most part these non-normative abilities were judged negatively and the carriers of such non-normative abilities experienced disabling treatment.   This very judgment (ableism) and its disabling consequences is one of the main areas of scholarly work within the realm of disability studies. Eugenics, the practice of finding ways to better heritable abilities of humans, is one dynamic that influences the judgment of people’s abilities and the disabling consequences and vice versa.

 

What sorts of people should there be is a question that has been asked and answered in different ways throughout human history, is still a question asked and answered today and will be with us also for some time in the future. 

 

Advances in science and technology will allow new judgments and actions linked to the sentiment around the question of what sorts of people there should be. 

 

In partnership with the SSHRC-CURA-funded project “Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada” (eugenicsarchive.ca), the Editors of IJDCR would like to devote a special issue on this topic. 

We invite potential contributors, regardless of fields of study (discipline), to submit 250-word abstracts that articulate the conceptual arguments and knowledge base to be covered in a critical analysis on various aspects from history to future of “What sorts of people should there be”.

 

Please submit abstracts to the Guest Editor via e-mail at gwolbrin[at]ucalgary.ca  by 15 July, 2012

 

From selected abstracts, we will request full articles of 3000-5000 words (excluding figures and tables) of original research and scholarship on a range of topics to be submitted to the editor by 15 October 2012. Note that an invitation to submit an article does not guarantee its publication.

 

Every submitted article will be subject to blind peer review and recommendations arising.

 

As to possible areas linked to the theme the below is a sample list of possible topics

 

• What sorts of people should be born
• What sorts of people should live
• What sorts of people should be citizens
• What sorts of people should compete
• What sorts of people….

 

We invite authors to investigate the history, contemporary use and potential future exhibition of the relationships between the core question “What sorts of people should there be” and such issues as:

 

• disabled people and what it means to be ‘disabled’,
• the community around them
• practitioners, consumers and researchers linked to the disability discourse
• community rehabilitation and the rehabilitation field in general
• inclusive education and the education of disabled people in general
• the future of education
• employability of disabled people
• citizenship of disabled people
• global citizenship
• body image of disabled people
• medical and social health policies and their impact on disabled people
•  health care for disabled people
• elderly people, youthism and ageism
• disabled people in low income countries
• laws and international conventions related to disabled people such as the UN      Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities
• the concept of personhood
• concept of health and health care
• the measure of disability adjusted life years and other measurements used to guide health care dollar allocation
• quality of life assessment
• history
• future
• science and technology governance
• science and technology assessment
• ethics
• enhancement

 For more information about the International Journal of Disability, Community & Rehabilitation (IJDCR) please go to http://www.ijdcr.ca.

 

International Journal of Disability, Community & Rehabilitation

www.ijdcr.ca

ISSN 1703-3381

 

 

Cheers

Gregor

Dr Gregor Wolbring

Associate Professor, University of Calgary,

Faculty of Medicine,

Dept. of Community Health Sciences, Specialization Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, 

3330 Hospital Drive NW, T2N4N1, Calgary, Alberta , Canada

Email: gwolbrin[at]ucalgary.ca

Phone 1-403-210-7083

Web: http://www.crds.org/research/faculty/Gregor_Wolbring.shtml

 

 

Dr. Phil.com Mercy or Murder

Deadly Consequences

Annette says she wants the right to euthanize her severely-disabled children, who are being kept alive only by feeding tubes. What would you do? Then, former model, Stephanie Vostry, says she’s fighting to survive chronic Lyme disease, an illness some believe she may be faking. Plus, chronic Lyme disease hits close to home for a “Dr. Phil” staff member.

Dr. Phil.com.

http://drphil.com/shows/show/1826

http://www.drphil.com/slideshows/slideshow/6834/?id=6834&showID=1826

http://www.drphil.com/slideshows/slideshow/6834/?id=6834&slide=1&showID=1826&preview=&versionID=

http://www.globalnews.ca/taking+mercy/6442597182/story.html

Dr Phil polls the audience

http://www.drphil.com/slideshows/slideshow/6834/?id=6834&slide=1&showID=1826&preview=&versionID=#

Visiting professor forced to leave Canada due to son having autism

The Martlet | Visiting professor forced to leave Canada.

 

Obesity: The thicknesses should pay for their extra kilos – News Debate – The world in words – WELT ONLINE

a piece from Peter Singer

Obesity: The thicknesses should pay for their extra kilos – News Debate – The world in words – WELT ONLINE.

 

California’s dark legacy of forced sterilizations

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/15/health/california-forced-sterilizations/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

BioEdge: Ethicists give thumbs-up to infanticide

BioEdge: Ethicists give thumbs-up to infanticide.

 

Chief fired after videotaped prank on mentally disabled teen – Action News 5 – Memphis, Tennessee

Chief fired after videotaped prank on mentally disabled teen – Action News 5 – Memphis, Tennessee.

 

Belgium wants to euthanize her crazy!

This is text translated with Google Translate from French.

CMAJ: Line between acts and omissions blurred, euthanasia critics argue

CMAJ: Line between acts and omissions blurred, euthanasia critics argue.

End of life report of Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel

http://www.rsc-src.ca/documents/RSCEndofLifeReport2011_EN_Formatted_FINAL.pdf

Here a few quotes related to us

“We discussed in considerable detail the arguments against assisted suicide. The evidence does
not support claims that decriminalizing voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide poses a threat
to vulnerable people, or that decriminalization will lead us down a slippery slope from assisted
suicide and voluntary euthanasia to non-voluntary or involuntary euthanasia. “

Also note their definitions. It makes the proposal goes far beyond what is legal in Oregon and Washington eliminating terminal as a boundary

““Voluntary Euthanasia” is an act undertaken by one person to kill another person whose
life is no longer worth living to them in accordance with the wishes of that person.”
“End of life can be understood as a continuum of events starting with the diagnosis of one or more
serious illnesses or injury”

“The Panel recommends against using “terminal illness” as a prerequisite for requesting
assistance. The term is too vague and would leave the statute or policy open to a Charter
challenge. There is no precise science to providing a prognosis of a terminal illness in terms  specific length of time. Health care providers cannot be accurate enough, and if the statute or
policy does not include a time restriction then the condition “terminal illness” becomes too
broad. For example, a person with Guillain-Barré syndrome will die from her disease, but lives
in the average three years after diagnosis. Further, if the term “terminal illness” is made a
necessary condition in the statute, then it would be under-inclusive; there are many individuals
whose lives are no longer worth living to them who have not been diagnosed with a terminal
illness. They may be suffering greatly and permanently, but are not imminently dying. There is
no principled basis for excluding them from assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia”

Cheers
Gregor

Wellcome Library: Papers of the Eugenics Society to be Digitised

Wellcome Library: Papers of the Eugenics Society to be Digitised.

The sterilisation campaign of Women With Disabilities Australia has gone global. .

The sterilisation campaign of Women With Disabilities Australia has gone global. . The Global Campaign to Stop Torture in Health Care has done a piece on our Exec Director, Carolyn Frohmader as their featured campaigner. Attached to the piece is a letter to Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland that people can send just by pressing their send button.

 

http://www.stoptortureinhealthcare.org/campaigner/carolyn-frohmader

Global Bodies call for end to Forced Sterilisation

The World Medical Association in conjunction with the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organizations issued a press release on 5 September 2011, calling for an end to forced sterilization. It is reproduced below, and is available at: http://www.wma.net/en/40news/20archives/2011/2011_17/index.html

 

THanks to Carolyn Frohmader from wwda.org.au

 

Cheers

Gregor

Murder of a disabled kid

Interesting the reason mentioned in the piece

http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20110815/ARTICLES/110819715/1314?Title=-8216-Angel-was-taken-away

COURT OF APPEAL Canada RULES ON LANDMARK END OF LIFE CASE.

More here.

Scope Discrimination Survey 15 May 2011

Deteriorating attitudes towards disabled people

New poll commissioned by Scope shows the alarming levels of discrimination disabled people face in daily life

• More than half of disabled people say they have experienced hostility, aggression or violence from a stranger because of their condition or impairment (56%)
• Half of disabled people say they experience discrimination on either a daily or weekly basis
• More than a third (37%) said people’s attitudes towards them have got worse over the past year.
• 58% of people thought others did not believe that they were disabled and 50% of people said they felt others presumed they did not work.

Scope Discrimination Survey 15 May 201

Dominic Lawson: Why the disabled fear assisted suicide

Last night, courtesy of the BBC, we could watch a man being killed – voluntarily. The much-heralded climax of the documentary Choosing to Die was of 71-year-old Peter Smedley being administered a lethal dose of Nembutal helped down with a praline chocolate (this was in Switzerland, after all). In his comments to accompany Smedley’s death, the presenter, Sir Terry Pratchett, declared: “This has been a happy event.”

 

 

here the full text

Fundamental Disability Rights Case Goes to Supreme Court of Canada

On Tuesday May 17th the Supreme Court of Canada will be asked to consider whether people with intellectual disabilities should be allowed to testify in court.  Specifically, the question before the Court is whether people with intellectual disabilities are required to demonstrate an understanding of the concept of a “promise to tell the truth” in order to be permitted to testify.

On Tuesday May 17th the Supreme Court of Canada will be asked to consider whether people with intellectual disabilities should be allowed to testify in court.  Specifically, the question before the Court is whether people with intellectual disabilities are required to demonstrate an understanding of the concept of a “promise to tell the truth” in order to be permitted to testify.

Your link text here.

Pre-pregnancy genetic screening backed by government advisers

from the Guardian UK

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