…e on the Public Policy section of our website here. – Diane] I am a 55-year-old white man who is a quadriplegic based on a spinal cord injury in 1984. The level of my injury was at the fourth cervical level, resulting in near total paralysis below my shoulders. My breathing ability survived the injury, and after diaphragmatic strengthening, I have breathed without assistance for the last 30 years. I drive a powered wheelchair with a sip/puff tube,…
…tion. Defendants’ argument appears to be based on the assumption that state-run hospitals and their staff do not have any affirmative duties toward patients who are currently admitted to inpatient care at their facilities, and that parents and guardians have unlimited authority to withhold medical care from those under their care so long as those individuals have disabilities. Such a result would effectively reverse Wisconsin’s longstanding recogn…
…Bioethics and Report Series at https://ncd.gov/publications/2019/bioethics-report-series About NCD’s Bioethics and Disability Series NCD’s bioethics and disability report series focuses on how historical and current devaluation of the lives of people with disabilities by the medical community, researchers, and health economists perpetuates unequal access to medical care, including life-saving care. NCD has released the following reports: Organ Tr…
…uble standard based on health status violates the ADA. Those words are as true today as they were then. Assisted suicide data continue to show that unmet disability-related needs are at the heart of requests for assisted suicide, with inadequate supports leading to feelings of losing autonomy and being a burden. “This lawsuit is our fight against a society and insurance industry that tells too many of us to hurry up and die,” Coleman says. “For al…
…ted suicide – loss of mobility, feeling like a burden on family, loss of so-called dignity, incontinence, have for generations justified the deaths of disabled people. It’s just another incremental step to make non-terminal disabled people eligible for this as has happened in Canada and much of Europe. Experts like Thaddeus Pope predict that disabled people like me will become eligible in the US. And that’s why disability rights groups have filed…
