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.

From USA Today:

Newly developed software is helping kids like JW Clark (left) communicate through an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch. JW has autism and does not speak.

JW uses Proloquo2Go, a downloadable application that lets him touch icons to voice basic comments or questions through the device’s tiny speakers. Apple touts another handful of communications applications on iTunes, including one that offers sign language assistance.

The cost for JW’s hardware and software is around $500, far less than the $8,000-$10,000 cost of the text-to-speech machine traditionally used in his Lincoln, Nebraska, elementary school.

Another benefit of the software, said one of its developers, is its “very hard-to-quantify cool factor.”

(USA Today photo)

From the AP/Houston Chronicle and the Austin American-Statesman Postcards blog:

The Texas State Senate has approved a settlement with the federal Department of Justice to improve living conditions and medical care at the state’s troubled institutions for people with intellectual disabilities. The settlement still needs House approval.

The plan calls for spending $112 million over five years, hiring more than 1,000 additional care workers, and improving investigations into abuse and neglect claims. The facilities have been cited by federal authorities for widespread civil rights violations and more than 50 unexplained deaths. Six former staff members currently face criminal charges for staging “fight clubs” between residents of the Corpus Christi State School.

Previous posts here.

From the Chicago Tribune:

A drug that is being marketed for the treatment of autism is being widely criticized by scientists who say it is unproven and potentially damaging.

Dr. Mark Geier and his son, David, (left) are promoting Lupron as a “miracle drug, ” but more than two dozen prominent endocrinologists dismissed the treatment earlier this year in a paper published online by the journal Pediatrics. The drug is sometimes used to chemically castrate sex offenders.

Said Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Center in Cambridge: “The idea of using it with vulnerable children with autism, who do not have a life-threatening disease and pose no danger to anyone, without a careful trial to determine the unwanted side effects or indeed any benefits, fills me with horror.”

See also:

Physician team’s crusade shows cracks – Chicago Tribune

(Chicago Tribune photo)

John Nichols, writing in The Nation’s ‘The Beat’ blog, says Sonia Sotomayor’s lifetime of managing Type 1 diabetes is a “big deal” that adds to her value as a potential Supreme Court justice — and not just as a role model.

Sotomayor’s experience is particularly important, Nichols writes, to a court that will be addressing a growing number of cases that focus on health-care access and medical research. An excerpt:

To have a judge who understands, through personal experience, the challenges and the needs of Americans with with serious diseases, lifelong conditions and profound hopes for medical breakthroughs.

This is another piece of the diversity puzzle, an essential piece that ought not be underestimated.

In a very real sense, the disease that steered her toward a legal career and a place on the federal bench is one of the greatest strengths that Judge Sotomayor would bring to the Supreme Court.

Earlier posts here.

By Peter A. Benn and Audrey R. Chapman in the Journal of the American Medical Association (subscription required):

Benn and Chapman say noninvasive prenatal diagnosis for fetal chromosomal abnormalities are expected to be commercially available within a year. The expected introduction of such tests raises “significant ethical issues,” they say, and will require the “ill-prepared medical system to change how patients are counseled and how cases are managed.”

Among other concerns, the authors cite these:

– Women currently receiving fetal Down syndrome screening often receive only limited information prior to the screening and are rarely asked to provide informed consent. Many women are unaware that this screening may ultimately lead to questions about further invasive testing and possible termination of the pregnancy.

– The use of noninvasive testing “may be encouraged” by for-profit laboratories, insurance companies and governmental health agencies that could derive economic benefits from the use of the testing, potentially undercutting individual patient choice.

– The reduced prevalence of people with identifiable genetic disabilities in the population could “subtly alter public attitudes toward the acceptability of continuing an affected pregnancy.” This attitude shift could “diminish understanding and support for affected individuals and their families and increase the stigma associated with having a genetic disorder.”

The authors call for the public, medical professional societies, and the government to be proactively involved in shaping the future of this testing.

An excerpt:

“It is important that the US Food and Drug Administration assume regulatory authority over genetic testing. There also needs to be an objective and scientific body that could consider these viewpoints, develop codes of practice, provide patient and professional education, make regulatory recommendations, and set minimum standards for prenatal diagnosis.

In summary, noninvasive prenatal diagnosis can potentially improve the safety and efficacy of prenatal diagnosis and thereby encourage wider application. However, its use requires new approaches in genetic counseling, reassessments of the utility of related testing, and expansion of testing oversight.”

From the [UK] Independent:

Some fifty years after the world’s worst drug disaster, Thalidomide survivors like Nick Dobrik (left) are still fighting for justice, seeking adequate compensation to help them live with disabilities caused by a drug that had not been fully tested before it was put on the market.

The over-the-counter medication was used by pregnant women for morning sickness in the late 1950s and early 1960s, resulting in the births of about 10,000 people worldwide with deformities like foreshortened and twisted limbs.

A Thalidomide trust was set up by the drug’s manufacturer in 1973, but Dobrik says it is not adequate to address the needs and expenses of people as they age.

“”It is ridiculous that 50 years after the events we are still fighting for justice,” Dobrik said. “… The least you can do for the Thalidomiders is allow them some independent life. They are very few in number but their needs are very great.”

Related posts here.

(Photo from the Independent)