Comments on: Police probe ‘assisted suicide’ of UK rugby star http://www.patriciaebauer.com/2008/10/18/rugby-assisted-suicide-3497/ Disability News | PatriciaEBauer.com Wed, 24 Nov 2010 22:50:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: harvey cowe http://www.patriciaebauer.com/2008/10/18/rugby-assisted-suicide-3497/comment-page-1/#comment-2978 harvey cowe Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:07:25 +0000 http://www.patriciaebauer.com/?p=3497#comment-2978 I feel that I must respond to the unbalanced, misguided reporting of the ‘assisted suicide' of Dan James. Every report that I have read portrays spinal cord injury as a tragedy and the lives of those acquiring such an injury as not worth living. As a person who has acquired a spinal cord injury 23 years ago and who has a three year old son who might one day read such accounts, I am offended and angry. Why couldn't the reports include descriptions of the lives of the many, many people who have acquired a spinal cord injury who live very fulfilling, happy lives? Why couldn't the report be balanced out with research that shows that having acquired a spinal cord injury, and other impairments need not necessarily lead to ‘a lingering death'. Research shows that, although disabled people are swimming against the tide of disabilism, many do manage to attain a good quality of life, find employment, become parents and contribute to society in many different ways. The following two quotes from men who have acquired a spinal cord injury when they were young highlights how such injuries do not necessarily lead to impoverished lives. Acquiring a spinal cord injury has been described by (Oliver 1984) as the best thing that had ever happened to him and that incurring a SCI gave him "an alternative possibility" of who he could become. He goes on to say; "Forty years later, I am a professor of disability studies, I have one marriage behind me and I am happily married again. I have grandchildren and have been all over the world. I have had a good life. I have no complaints." In Cole (2004) Incurring a SCI for (Finkelstein 2002), meant one destiny being left behind and replaced with another more fulfilling, more rewarding and more human than he could ever have hoped for, that resulted in; "an amazing bouquet of surprises-– entirely unpredictable friendships, world-wide travel, diverse careers, loving relationships in a delightful family, and the honour of being given a little role in helping to turn one small but enduring part of the world upside down" (Finkelstein 2002). Most of the newspapers monopolized on the family quote that Dan was unwilling to live as a ‘second class citizen'. What makes people who have acquired a spinal cord injury into ‘second class citizen' is the prejudice, policies and practices that we are subjected to, not a spinal cord injury. Impairment will always be around, distorted and misguided reporting and the prejudice that this reinforces, need not be. Disgusted, Harvey Cowe Resources: Oliver in conversation with Cole, J. (2004). Still lives: Narratives of Spinal Cord Injury. MIT Press, London. Finkelstein, V. In ‘Whose History ???' (Keynote address at the Disability History Week, Birmingham, 10th June 2002) I feel that I must respond to the unbalanced, misguided reporting of the ‘assisted suicide’ of Dan James. Every report that I have read portrays spinal cord injury as a tragedy and the lives of those acquiring such an injury as not worth living. As a person who has acquired a spinal cord injury 23 years ago and who has a three year old son who might one day read such accounts, I am offended and angry.

Why couldn’t the reports include descriptions of the lives of the many, many people who have acquired a spinal cord injury who live very fulfilling, happy lives? Why couldn’t the report be balanced out with research that shows that having acquired a spinal cord injury, and other impairments need not necessarily lead to ‘a lingering death’. Research shows that, although disabled people are swimming against the tide of disabilism, many do manage to attain a good quality of life, find employment, become parents and contribute to society in many different ways.

The following two quotes from men who have acquired a spinal cord injury when they were young highlights how such injuries do not necessarily lead to impoverished lives.

Acquiring a spinal cord injury has been described by (Oliver 1984) as the best thing that had ever happened to him and that incurring a SCI gave him “an alternative possibility” of who he could become. He goes on to say;

“Forty years later, I am a professor of disability studies, I have one marriage behind me and I am happily married again. I have grandchildren and have been all over the world. I have had a good life. I have no complaints.” In Cole (2004)

Incurring a SCI for (Finkelstein 2002), meant one destiny being left behind and replaced with another more fulfilling, more rewarding and more human than he could ever have hoped for, that resulted in;

“an amazing bouquet of surprises-– entirely unpredictable friendships, world-wide travel, diverse careers, loving relationships in a delightful family, and the honour of being given a little role in helping to turn one small but enduring part of the world upside down” (Finkelstein 2002).

Most of the newspapers monopolized on the family quote that Dan was unwilling to live as a ‘second class citizen’. What makes people who have acquired a spinal cord injury into ‘second class citizen’ is the prejudice, policies and practices that we are subjected to, not a spinal cord injury.

Impairment will always be around, distorted and misguided reporting and the prejudice that this reinforces, need not be.

Disgusted, Harvey Cowe

Resources:

Oliver in conversation with Cole, J. (2004). Still lives: Narratives of Spinal Cord Injury. MIT Press, London.

Finkelstein, V. In ‘Whose History ???’ (Keynote address at the Disability History Week, Birmingham, 10th June 2002)

]]>