We Are All Disabled

J. Hughes tackled disability and enhancement over the weekend at a conference I wish I could have attended. Walking the dangerous line between medicalizing every disability and relativism, Hughes hits the sweet spot:

So one of the consequences of enabling technologies, I argued, will be to reveal that we are all “disabled” relative to the higher states of ability, senses, emotions and cognition that will become routinely available. Paradoxically this will also a triumph of medicalization, since eventually every human condition will be “treatable.” So there is a real dystopian potential, and a real utopian opportunity, in this future. The dystopia is one where the majority of people see themselves as disabled because they lack access to enablement, and are constantly struggling with drug companies and doctors to afford what the affluent take for granted. The utopia is one where the majority have access to safe enabling technologies and choose which ones they will use.

The Disabled Are Divine Punishment

My God, Bob McDonnell is a deplorable human being:

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically,” he reportedly said. “Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.”

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord,” he added. “There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

I wonder why Palin isn’t in arms. But then again, she did contemplate aborting Trig. Maybe God knew what was in her heart and afflicted the poor child with Down. But she did flip out over the whole Family Guy retard joke. Speaking of:

“I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line ‘I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska’ was very funny. I think the word is ‘sarcasm.’ In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes,” – Andrea Fay Friedman, the girl with Down Syndrome who voiced the character for Family Guy.

(H/T Kink on Tap and The Daily Dish)

“Imprisonment Without Parole”

Tony Judt lets us into the struggles of his daily routine. His summary of his condition:

In effect, ALS constitutes progressive imprisonment without parole. First you lose the use of a digit or two; then a limb; then and almost inevitably, all four. The muscles of the torso decline into near torpor, a practical problem from the digestive point of view but also life-threatening, in that breathing becomes at first difficult and eventually impossible without external assistance in the form of a tube-and-pump apparatus. In the more extreme variants of the disease, associated with dysfunction of the upper motor neurons (the rest of the body is driven by the so-called lower motor neurons), swallowing, speaking, and even controlling the jaw and head become impossible. I do not (yet) suffer from this aspect of the disease, or else I could not dictate this text.

By my present stage of decline, I am thus effectively quadriplegic. With extraordinary effort I can move my right hand a little and can adduct my left arm some six inches across my chest. My legs, although they will lock when upright long enough to allow a nurse to transfer me from one chair to another, cannot bear my weight and only one of them has any autonomous movement left in it. Thus when legs or arms are set in a given position, there they remain until someone moves them for me. The same is true of my torso, with the result that backache from inertia and pressure is a chronic irritation. Having no use of my arms, I cannot scratch an itch, adjust my spectacles, remove food particles from my teeth, or anything else that—as a moment’s reflection will confirm—we all do dozens of times a day. To say the least, I am utterly and completely dependent upon the kindness of strangers (and anyone else).

Read the whole essay. It is, in turns, beautiful, heart-wrenching, frustrating, alienating, incomprehensible, and inspiring. Stories like Judt’s, more than anything, are why I study and believe many of the tenets of transhumanism. Wellness – vibrant, youthful, dynamic, perpetual – is the goal, enhancement is secondary.

[H/T Tyler Cowen]