Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Times:

Civil and disability rights attorneys Thursday filed a federal lawsuit against Los Angeles County alleging that “egregious” jail conditions amounted to illegal discrimination against people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Sheriff Lee Baca said the lawsuit was “unreasonable and unfair.”

The lawsuit alleges people with disabilities face inhumane treatment and are illegally discriminated against because the jail system routinely fails to accommodate their basic needs.

In interviews with 70 inmates, the attorneys cited inmate accounts of having to lie in their own waste for hours because wheelchair-accessible toilets and showers were not available or because their catheter bags were taken away.

Others said they had to drag themselves on the floor because they had no access to their wheelchairs or bathroom doors weren’t wide enough to accommodate them.

Earlier posts here and here.

Stephen Kuusisto, professor, University of Iowa: Letter to the principal ‘On being Alex Barton’

I still carry deep under my skin the barbs and taunts of mean spirited public school classmates who found ways to bully me simply because of my disability … Like many “baby boomers” with disabilities who helped to pioneer the concept of mainstreaming for disabled kids I keep hoping that the vicious and ignorant behavior that I experienced in public schools will at last become a thing of the past.

… I hope it’s not too much to ask that your school district will now take this opportunity to think hard about disability with a renewed sense that kids with disabilities are real citizens too.

(more…)

Scripps Howard News Service in the Chicago Sun-Times:

A kindergarten teacher in Port St. Lucie, Florida, defended her actions to police, saying that she wanted a five-year-old boy to hear from his peers how his behavior affected them. Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo acknowledged that she did have the students vote, but said the vote was only to eject Alex Barton from class for the day — not for good.

(more…)

From WCAI, public radio on Cape Cod:

Ari Shapiro presents a thought-provoking and nuanced conversation about the challenges posed by prenatal screening, selective termination and informed consent. Crissy Condon and Bill Roslansky have three children (at left). Matthew was born with Down syndrome three years ago after the couple had been reassured by doctors that their prenatal screen was “negative.”

Bill and Crissy hadn’t really understood that screening only delivers probabilities, while diagnostic testing (amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling) is needed to produce a definitive result.

(more…)

Experts see harm to babies; Many C-sections seen as elective

From the Los Angeles Times:

The number of preterm births in the United States grew by more than a third between 1996 and 2004, and Cesarean sections accounted for the vast majority of the increase, researchers said this week.

Most of the upsurge involved what physicians call late-preterm babies, those born after 34 to 36 weeks of gestation rather than the normal full term of 38 to 42 weeks.

Physicians are concerned about the growing number of late-preterm babies — which now account for 72% of all preemies — because recent studies have shown serious health risks for them, including immature organs, breathing problems, feeding problems, difficulties regulating body temperature, jaundice and a threefold increase in death during the first year of life.

… While many of the C-sections are medically necessary, experts fear that growing numbers are the result of physicians’ fears of lawsuits arising from complications during labor and mothers’ desire to schedule births at convenient times.

See also: Prematurity causing lasting harm, disabilities, study finds

New York Daily News, Associated Press/Houston Chronicle:

New York Governor David Paterson said this week he didn’t become fully comfortable with his disability until fairly recently. Instead, he said, he sought to hide his blindness over the years, rejecting a cane or seeing eye dog for fear of being beaten up.

“It was hard for me to get the social services people to understand that,” he said. “They said, ‘They’d never attack a person with a cane.’”

“I said, ‘You don’t know the folks in my neighborhood. When they see a white cane, they see that you can’t identify the perpetrators.’”

As he got older, he said he wouldn’t even pick up change if he dropped it because he didn’t want people to see him crawling around on the floor.

“These are the ancillary disabilities from which people suffer,” Paterson said. “It’s not just the physical disability, it’s how they make you feel as a human being. And that’s the reason that a lot of people try to hide that.”

In Time magazine, an interview with a woman whose son was not inoculated against measles, caught the virus in Europe, and subsequently infected 12 other children.

The woman, identified only as “Jane” for fear of retaliation, said she “selectively” vaccinates her children because she worries about the ingredients in the vaccines.

She adds about the outbreak, “I feel horrible for those children and their parents, but I want to protect all children from harm. And so by making sure there is more research done, we can help all children.”

… because the U.S. is a relatively healthy first-world country with a well-functioning health care system, [she said] she feels safe in making the choice to vaccinate selectively. “Looking at the diseases mumps, measles and rubella in a country like the U.S. … it doesn’t tend to be a problem,” Jane said. “… because I live in a country where the norm is vaccine, I can delay my vaccines.”

Related posts include:

• Public health risks seen as parents reject vaccines
• Former head of NIH raises new questions about autism, vaccines
• Op-ed: Vaccine’s benefits outweigh dangers