Monday, August 07, 2017

Are Medical professionals objective about disabilities

One of the things the recent Charlie Gard case brought out was the widespread belief that medical professionals are objective about disabilities.
As a presuppositionalist, I don't believe that any of us make judgments in a vacuum, we all have deep seated beliefs driving us. I believe over the years, our society (including the Government and medical profession) have demonstrated a bias against disabled people.
Two examples of this can be found in the following article.

Firstly, notice how the disabled Lord Skinkwin was effectively sacked from his role as Disability Commissioner to the EHRC within days of being appointed.

Secondly, notice how he claims that the assessment for whether a foetus's disability has enough severity and risk to be aborted (at any time up till birth) is 'subjective, which he says “is borne out by the abortion of 11 babies in 2015 for surgically rectifiable conditions such as cleft palate and hair lip”.
Lord Skinkwin warns us that we are heading in the direction of wiping out disabled people before they can be born.

In the Charlie Gard case, I so often heard people saying, 'But he's in pain, he should be put out of his misery as quickly as possible'. But in response I say, 'The parents say they didn't think he was in pain', and further more, 'I am in constant pain with my disability, should you put me out of my misery?' I'm not saying there's not a time and place for turning off life support, I'm merely challenging how quickly our society assumes its time to kill because of disability.