Question
Do you think that disabled people should be put down at birth?
Answer
Well, theres a lot, as a disability activist, active in three trade unions, two tenants associations and the TUC, I could say. But I will limit myself to some major points ...brbr Only of disabled people are disabled from birth, the rest acquire disabilities in later life. The age at which significant numbers of people start to become disabled is ,brbr With increased longevity, the percentage of the population who are disabled is rising and will rise significantly. In , life expectancy for men was , for women . That generation mostly died before significant numbers of it had a chance to become disabled.brbrWith improvements in medical care, more and more people are now surviving operations and conditions that a generation earlier would have killed them. But they do so as disabled people.brbr Social policy hasnt got to grips yet with the problem of a higher percentage of elderly people in the population, let alone with a higher percentage of disabled people in the population.brThe UK Government proposes to make both sexes work till , as a way of dealing with the former problem! What kind of soluton is that?brbr In ancient Egypt they dealt with the problem by feeding the elderly to the crocodiles. In ancient Greece, disabled newborn babies were left to die on a mountainside. These arent solutions either.brbr Should Beethoven have been put down when he went deaf? We wouldnt have his th Symphony if he had have been. It didnt prevent him writing it, did it? Similarly, Motor Neurone Disease hasnt prevented Stephen Hawking from making a major contribution to cosmology.brbr What has limited Hawking, though, is the inadequacy of his care package and support he receives. It forced him into making an undignified selfparody of himself by using his Metal Mickey voice in stupid TV commercials just to earn the money to pay for his Personal Assistants and Nursing support.brbrLord Ashleys Independent Living Bill currently going through the House of Lords seeks to ensure disabled people define and get the support they need.brbr The key issue is WHAT IS DISABILITY? The medical and charity models of disability would have us believe that our impairments are our disability. X is deaf, Y is blind, Z has mobility issues. But to fully understand disability we need to use the Social Model of Disability, which makes clear that what disables us are the barriers we face to full inclusion in society. e,g, the built environment, peoples attitudes and assumptions, the policy, practices and procedures of organisations.brbr Solutions to disabled people not having a full life therefore lie in systematically removing the barriers we face. Remove the barriers, do not remove the person who experiences the barriers! See the person, not the disability!
