On NPR’s All Things Considered, Joseph Shapiro asks whether diabetes — or any other health condition —  should be a factor in deciding whether someone like Sonia Sotomayor is qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.

Some commentators have raised Sotomayor’s health as an issue, saying diabetes could shorten her lifespan. Diabetes experts say new treatments are allowing people to lead long, healthy lives.

Endocrinologist Paul Robertson, president for medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, suggested Sotomayor be asked whether she is taking care of herself properly.  “Those kinds of questions make sense because you’d ask the same questions of somebody with a chronic disease like heart disease or cancer or leukemia,” he said.

Chai Feldblum, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who has a specialty in disability civil rights law, says Sotomayor’s example could reduce the stigma that exists around diabetes.

“It matters that a nominee for the Supreme Court is someone who acknowledges she has diabetes and that forms an aspect of her life,” says Feldblum. Disability civil rights groups noted that, at a time when other judges had limited the scope of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Sotomayor ruled in favor of disabled plaintiffs, including a woman with learning disabilities who’d gotten extra time on tests during law school but then was denied the same accommodation when she tried to take the bar exam.

Earlier posts here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 7:43 am and is filed under Obama administration, chronic illness, diabetes, law, politics, public attitudes, stigma. 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.