Dr. Christopher D. Saudek writes in the Baltimore Sun that Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination points out the contributions of people with diabetes, and reminds us that each person with a disability “is entitled to individual consideration and reasonable accommodation.”

Saudek says court-mandated limitations on the Americans with Disabilities Act deprived people with diabetes of legal protection against discrimination. The ADA Amendments Act last year extended protection to disability groups that had been excluded.

Much is being written about Judge Sotomayor’s legal prowess, her ethnicity and her gender, but the other story is at least as big. It is the story of medical progress that allows people with diabetes to lead full, healthy lives. It is the story of how some 24 million Americans with diabetes, more than 2 million with type 1 diabetes, are increasingly contributing in the mainstream of American life. And it is the story of the ongoing effort to snuff out the remnants of discrimination against people with chronic diseases like diabetes.

Dr. Christopher D. Saudek is a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Diabetes Center.

(ABC News photo)

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 6:37 am and is filed under ADA, NOT2BEMISSED, Obama administration, chronic illness, civil rights, diabetes, discrimination. 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.