Hello All, One of the key areas for the disabled rights movement is cognitive issues. To be clear when I use this term, cognitive, many disabled people do not use it in broad context, but to mean a specific area of disability. Cognitive for me is involvement of the brain in a disability. Schizophrenia, developmental disability, blindness, dyslexia and so forth have cognitive issues. This article in the NY Times goes to the heart of the physician assisted suicide movement. The disability rights movement takes a strong stand on the rights of disabled people, and contra to philosophers like Peter Singer of Princeton advocate euthanasia for a variety of disabled people. I do not think the medical profession is the place for these issues to be fought out, i.e. this is a social issue, and a class issue. However, in some cases in a practical sense this is where the debate is currently waged as well as by election for the right to suicide. The article I quote is:
What if There Is Something Going On in There? By CARL ZIMMER NY Times magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/magazine/28VEGETAT.html Published: September 28, 2003 .... Doyle, There are particular claims in the article: ..."One morning just over a year after his accident, Rios was taken to the Sloan Kettering Institute on Manhattan's East Side. There, in a dim room, a group of researchers placed a mask over his eyes, fixed headphones over his ears and guided his head into the bore of an M.R.I. machine. A 40-second loop of a recording made by Rios's sister Maria played through the headphones: she told him that she was there with him, that she loved him. As the sound entered his ears, the M.R.I. machine scanned his brain, mapping changes in activity. Several hours afterward, two researchers, Nicholas D. Schiff and Joy Hirsch, took a look at the images from the scan. They hadn't been sure what to expect -- Rios was among the first people in his condition to have his brain activity measured in this way -- but they certainly weren't expecting what they saw. ''We just stared at these images,'' recalls Schiff, an expert in consciousness disorders at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. ''There didn't seem to be anything missing.'' As the tape of his sister's voice played, several distinct clusters of neurons in Rios's brain had fired in a manner virtually identical to that of a healthy subject. Some clusters that became active were those known to help process spoken language, others to recall memories. Was Rios recognizing his sister's voice, remembering her? ''You couldn't tell the difference between these parts of his brain and the brain of one of my graduate students,'' says Hirsch, an expert in brain imaging at Columbia University. Even the visual centers of Rios's brain had come alive, despite the fact that his eyes were covered. It was as if his sister's words awakened his mind's eye. " Doyle, The implication being that what had been the bottom line for euthanasia has once again shifted. I.e. what constitutes the right place to exterminate disabled people when they are (fill in the blank)? The writer for this article continues with some other points worth considering: ..."Last year in the journal Neurology, Giacino and 10 co-authors accounted for that touch of the nose -- and other enigmatic hints of awareness they have observed -- by proposing a new category of consciousness: the minimally conscious state. By their reckoning, a vast number of people who might once have been considered vegetative actually have hidden reserves of mental activity. And as the study of Rios suggests, brain scans may be able to help scientists eavesdrop on their inner world. ''It's free speech for people who have no speech,'' Hirsch says. " Doyle, Of course the decision and right to suicide is not being contested by the disabled community, rather the social structure that labels particular disabled people as unfit for society. And therefore having done that steps in to put them to death, or in many cases provide them with no support and pushes them to do it themselves thereby depending up their depressions (a disabled state which affects roughly 10% of the U.S.) that ensue to get rid of people. That is a complex issue which gets lost in the rush to give people the right to suicide. For those interested, our radio program, Pushing Limits" in the San Francisco Bay area will take a look at these issues on Sunday October 5th, at 6:30pm to 7:00pm. I may be co-hosting that show, still to be decided, but Eddie Ytuarte housing advocate and disability activist will be the main host. Our show breaks ground in the intellectual world. We go to the limits for disabled people. We stand for socialism and justice for all the oppressed working class. Power to the Disabled! For those confused about this area, I am talking about 54 million people in the U.S. some of whom being wealthy can afford a better life but in a daily way on the streets is the reality for disability (homelessness). thanks, Doyle
