A week ago today I had the welcome fortune to attend a symposium at Syracuse University on bio-ethics, disability, and medicine. The event featured a keynote talk by Bill Peace with presenters Brenda Brueggemann, Barbara Farlow, and Sheri Fink. The theme of the day was, essentially, “in what manner can people with disabilities live in the age of pre-natal genetic testing, expensive medical technologies, diminishing public support for social programs, and the unvanquished shadow of eugenics?
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person according the the UN. Yet the moral principle is not certain with disability. One reason for this is that medicine (broadly) cannot distinguish between the science of “curing” and the art of “healing”–a difference which appeared in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As medical technology became more sophisticated so did the pressure to relieve patients of disablement. The inability of physicians to cure a disability meant failure rather than an opportunity. Healing means living and doing it well. People with disabilities do live beautifully and successfully, but often they do so in spite of their physicians.
I spoke two days ago at the University of Texas School of Medicine in San Antonio. My audience was composed of physicians and medical students. “The worst thing you can say to a person with a disability is, I’m sorry, there’s nothing more I can do for you.”
When doctors say this, they are not healers. It’s incumbent on physicians to imagine successful lives for patients whose “condition” can’t be cured, which means they must know more about the world of rehabilitation, art, and accommodations.
I’m sorry, there’s nothing more I can do for you, is essentially mal-practice.
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Planet of the Blind 