In the Toronto Globe & Mail, Canadian athlete Rick Hansen says the Paralympic Games have made great progress since he won six medals for wheelchair racing in 1980 and 1984.

He cites improvements in training, equipment and sponsorship, but acknowledges that “it’s going to be a difficult challenge” to bring broader acceptance to the Games. An excerpt from the interview with Sarah Hampson:

“Exposure is key,” he says. The sports are “not about fragility,” he says, cautioning me not to be romantic by thinking that a disabled person’s participation in sport is a way to restore faith in a broken body. “It’s just great competition.”

His philosophy is evident in everything he says: Dwell not on what you don’t have, or can’t have; focus on what you have and are able to do …

“Usually the biggest demon is not out there,” he says, gesturing to the world outside his window. “It’s what is inside your head.”

Hansen raised $26 million for spinal cord research and awareness through a 34-nation wheelchair tour shortly after his Paralympics victories, and will soon kick off a new global initiative with a target of $200 million.

Earlier posts here.

In a Washington Post profile of Tim Shriver, writer Manuel Roig-Franzia examines the Special Olympics chairman’s campaign to discourage language that makes fun at the expense of people with intellectual disabilities.

Shriver has received apologies from President Obama, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Bill O’Reilly (sort of) for “colloquial jabs about ‘retards’ or quips that equate Special Olympians with ineptitude or remarks that equate “retarded” with stupidity.”

To Shriver, the discussion is more than a mere linguistic fight, writes Roig-Franzia; it’s a welcome opportunity to have a public conversation about what Shriver terms the “humiliation” faced by this population.

The crusade has brought both admiration and derision for Shriver, who will soon be the only member of the Kennedy family serving in a high-profile position in Washington. An excerpt:

… Shriver — who wants to be a catalyst for social change — would like to further expand the mission [of Special Olympics], addressing unemployment (90 percent of people with intellectual disabilities do not work, he says, but half of Special Olympians have jobs) and taking on elite private schools in Washington, such as his alma mater, St. Albans, and Sidwell Friends because they don’t routinely admit students with intellectual disabilities, as many public schools do.

But there are only so many fights to pick at once. In Bethesda, Shriver helps organize “unified” sports contests that place young people with disabilities on the same teams as those who don’t. At the same time, he has sent his own kids to top private schools, such as Maret, that he says are not “inclusive” and guesses he “could be accused of being hypocritical. But this is a 100-front war.”

(Photo from the Washington Post; More photos here.)

Editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal hail the recent court rulings that dismiss allegations of a link between vaccines and autism in children. An excerpt:

The rulings follow the same court’s judgment last year against claims that measles-mumps-rubella shots in combination with other thimerosal-containing vaccines cause autism. And they reinforce many comprehensive scientific studies, including one from the Institute of Medicine, that have ruled out any causal link.

Autism is a frightening diagnosis that puts enormous burdens on families, but blaming vaccines without evidence only harms other families who might be frightened enough not to immunize their children. The fate of children with autism would be far better served if the activists who have devoted their resources to lawsuits would support research to discover its true causes, and to helping those children realize their full human potential.

Vancouver Sun columnist Miro Cernetig reacts to the decision by CTV not to broadcast the opening ceremonies of the Paralympic Games across Canada. The Canadian television network subsequently reversed itself and broadcast the ceremonies, but only in British Columbia.

Cernetig urges network executives to “rectify their unfortunate slight of the world’s Paralympians” by broadcasting the closing ceremony. Excerpts follow:

If the job is to shoot yourself in the foot, look hard-hearted and show you don’t quite get the true spirit of the Olympics, CTV’s bean-counters take the gold.

… We don’t put the Olympic cauldron on half-burn for Paralympians.

Nobody is pretending the Paralympics is a TV mega-event on the scale of the Olympics. There are no celebrity Paralympians raking in the millions or pro athletes dipping their toes into amateur sport to go for the gold.

But when it comes to stories of human tenacity, athleticism and sheer grit, most of us agree the Paralympians deserved — even for a half-hour of prime time — the national spotlight as they marched into BC Place.

Some video coverage of the Paralympic Games can be found at Paralympic Sport TV here.

(Reuters photo of the opening ceremony from the Vancouver Sun)

Writing in the Vancouver Sun, Jeff Lee says the 2010 Winter Paralympic Games, which kicked off this weekend in Vancouver, is “an event that organizers say should help change the way people view others who are missing limbs or eyesight or have bodies that don’t function the way theirs do.”

More than 60,000 people gathered Friday for the event’s opening ceremony, hailing 1,300 competitors and officials who came from 44 countries to compete in the Games.

“As a sport event, the Paralympic Games are about extraordinary athletes who are exceptionally talented at their chosen sport,” said Carla Qualtrough, president of the Canadian Paralympic Committee. “As a movement, the Paralympic movement is about changing perceptions, dispelling myths and challenging assumptions.”

Editorial: Keep your Olympic spirit alive with the Paralympic Games — Vancouver Sun.

Full coverage here

From CBC News:

Canada has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Speaking at the UN in New York, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the action underscores the Canadian government’s commitment to “promoting and protecting the rights of persons with disabilities and enabling their full participation in society.”

Advocates say the ratification will require provincial governments to make changes, like requiring schools to provide inclusive education for all students. They say some Canadian students with disabilities are still being restricted to segregated school sites.

Canada is host to this year’s winter Paralympic Games.

See also: Who will fund accessibility compliance?

From the Los Angeles Times, AP/Wall Street Journal:

A special federal court ruled Friday that the vaccine additive thimerosal does not cause autism. The ruling, which came in three separate cases, follows a parallel ruling in 2009 that autism is not caused by the combination of thimerosal with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.

Experts said the rulings would likely be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, as the earlier ruling has been.

More than 5,300 parents have filed claims seeking damages because they believe vaccines caused autism in their children. The court, a branch of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, expressed sympathy for the families but concluded that they had failed to prove their case.