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Thursday, January 1, 2009

New year resolution number three: changing the attitude that people with disabilities are expendable

...or that their lives are worth less.

Medics caught on tape allegedly decide disabled man not worth saving

A disabled 59 year old man who called EMT's for help collapsed by the time an ambulance arrived and the medics were allegedly overheard making remarks "to the effect that he was not worth saving" over the open phone line. They made comments about the state of his house. The article states they talked about it and agreed to say the man was dead when they arrived.

See the poem How? by Dan Wilkins

Fear Not the Disabled

Grim News to Start 2009: Bad Cripple

If Disabled Means Expendable



2 comments:

Pilgrim said...

This is sad, but seems to be the direction the Western world, north of the equator, is heading.

I read an article on the First Things site by the mother of a child with DS. She writes:

In a letter to the editor of the New York Times, William Motley, a geneticist of Oxford University, writes, “Fighting Down syndrome with prenatal screening does not ‘border on eugenics.’ It is a ‘search-and-destroy mission’ on the disease, not on a category of citizens. . . . ”

Right.

Ruth said...

Julana- yes, Bill's post over at Bad Cripple spells out the issues very well. The rationalizations used in this regard, I suppose, slide by easily for those who stay away from people with the "disease" and see them as the other, rather than friends, loved ones, family members, coworkers or community members.