Dominic Lawson on Ivan Cameron and the meaning of life

Writing in the [UK] Sunday Times, columnist Dominic Lawson says the recent death of young Ivan Cameron, son of British opposition leader David Cameron, is a reminder that there remains a “visceral public fear and even horror” of people with disabilities. Ivan had cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Lawson’s daughter Domenica has Down syndrome.

Lawson totes up recent examples of negative attitudes:

• Parents who lodged formal complaints to the BBC because they feared their children might be upset at the appearance of TV host Cerrie Burnell, who was born without a lower half of her right arm.
• A girl with disabilities who died in a hospital because health care workers concluded her life was not worth living and therefore not worth fighting to preserve.
• A hospital worker who said to that girl’s mother, after her death, “It must be awful; it’s almost like losing a child.”

What the public and the medical profession fail to understand, Lawson says, is that people with disabilities are satisfied with who they are. Their disability is part of their identity.

Sadly, he writes,

… most parents of disabled children endure a constant struggle to convince the world outside that they are fully human, too.

If the public life and death of Ivan Cameron does something to change that, it would be a memorial greater than any eulogy.

See also: The funeral of Ivan Cameron, from the [UK] Times

Earlier posts here.

Other work by Dominic Lawson.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Down syndrome, NOT2BEMISSED, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, families, international, neglect, personal stories, public attitudes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.