From the [UK] Independent:

Jack Thorne, a co-writer for the BBC series “Cast Offs,” says his own experience inspired him to create a show that explodes a few myths about disability. Thorne has a condition called chronic cholinergic urticaria, which is basically an allergy to heat, and another co-writer, Alex Bulmer, is blind.

Thorne says the protagonist of the series, Dan (portrayed by Peter Mitchell, left), represents himself as he was adjusting to life as a man with disabilities. He says the show is about Dan being “born-again” as he is immersed in the world of disability and “discovers that not all disabled people are as introverted or full of self-hatred and pity as he.”

Dan’s coming-out story is all about that basic truth – a truth I learnt as he did: disabled people are just as annoying as non-disabled people.

… Disablism remains a big prejudice in modern society. Last year on Jay Leno’s primetime talk show, the President of the United States made a joke about disabled people which, if it had been about any other minority group, would have led to serious questioning of his ability to lead the country. Obama said that his performance at bowling was so bad “it was like the Special Olympics or something”. Disability, by Obama’s definition, was about difference and failure.

And TV buys into this prejudice; if it moved on from race discrimination in the 1970s, it’s not moved on from disabled discrimination yet.

Thorne says his show is a “filthy, funny, different TV show” that tries to shed the usual stereotypes of people with disabilities as quirky object of pity and rather portray them as authentic.

(Independent photo)

Earlier posts here and here.

See also:

• Cast Offs – Time to cast a new light on disability – [UK] Independent
• BBC casts deaf actress in lead role – [UK] Daily Mirror
• It’s okay to call me a spastic, says comic Laurence Clark — [UK] News & Star
• It’s OK, you’re allowed to laugh at Cast Offs – [UK] Times

From Reuters/ABC News:

A new study has found a higher rate of birth defects among babies conceived by assisted reproduction compared to babies conceived naturally.

In the study, almost 3 percent of infants conceived with assisted reproduction were diagnosed with a major birth defect, compared to less than 2 percent of babies conceived naturally, Dr. Darine El-Chaar and colleagues from The Ottawa Hospital in Ontario, Canada and colleagues found.

The study included all deliveries in the province of Ontario in 2005 for which information was available on reproductive assistance. Some possible reasons are the greater age of mothers and fathers who undergo this treatment and the number of interventions required.

By Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan in the Chicago Tribune:

Autism researchers say their work is being taken out of context by doctors to promote alternative autism treatments, which are widely sought by desperate parents. Even though most physicians warn parents to stay away from unproven treatment methods, studies have found that up to three-quarters of families of children with autism try at least some unproven therapies.

Physicians and others, many of them affiliated with the organization “Defeat Autism Now!”, are promoting such unproven methods as intravenous immunoglobulin, testosterone inhibitors, hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and fatty acid therapy.

They say the methods are solidly based on science, “but the Tribune found otherwise after speaking with dozens of scientists and physicians and reviewing thousands of pages of research and court testimony,” Tsouderos and Callahan write.

Johns Hopkins neurologist Dr. Carlos Pardo, whose study is being cited as justification for the use of intravenous immunoglobulin and hyperbaric oxygen treatments, had warned doctors against just such an interpretation of his work. “People are abusing science for the treatment of autism,” he said.

Cambridge University autism researcher Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, whose work has been cited to defend the use of a testosterone inhibitor on children with autism, said the idea of using the drug this way “fills me with horror.”

Experts said the treatments could lead to unexpected side effects that could be worse than the condition itself.

Minette Marrin, writing in the [UK] Sunday Times, reacts to a BBC2 documentary about a couple with Down syndrome who are deciding whether to marry. Marrin’s sister has an intellectual disability. An excerpt:

It is hard enough to be an adequate parent with supposedly normal intelligence. For someone of very low intelligence it is even harder. That is presumably why so many – 50%-60% – of babies born to parents with learning disabilities are taken away by social workers, a horrifying thing but arguably, in many cases, the least worst thing to do.

… I hate to be someone who thinks social workers may be right, sometimes, in removing a child from parents with learning disabilities. I hate to be someone who thinks it is unwise and unfair to encourage people with LDs to have babies and I certainly wouldn’t attempt to stop anyone. But wishful thinking is sometimes at odds with a sense of responsibility, as I think Emma and Ben came to feel. There are some things in life that all the love you have cannot change and cannot make better.

Related post: Pregnant woman with learning disabilities flees to keep baby

A documentary on BBC2′s “Wonderland” series, follows Emma Bishop and Ben Marshall, two young adults in England who have been together for six years and are very much in love. Both have Down syndrome.

They want to wed, but face complications from their parents and from the benefits system. “The thing with having Down syndrome is that sometimes you’re not treated like an adult,” explained Emma. “And people don’t listen to what you say.”

In the [UK] Independent, reviewer Alice-Azania Jarvis says the work is “a moving, striking and insightful film…, not to mention one, which, hopefully will work towards changing the attitudes Emma mentioned.”

Lucy Mangan, writing in the [UK] Guardian, called the documentary a “slight film” that fails to consider the broader context of “the difficulties of reconciling adult human rights with childlike vulnerabilities.” Still, she says, the film was valuable for providing “a nuanced portrait of two people leading the kind of lives rarely seen at length on the screen.”

From the  [UK] Daily Mail, [UK] Times:

A pregnant woman with learning disabilities and her fiance have reportedly fled Scotland after social workers threatened to take away their baby at birth, saying the woman was not capable of raising the child.

Two months ago, the couple’s wedding was halted 48 hours before the ceremony in a dispute over whether Kerry Robertson, 17, was capable of consenting to marry Mark McDougall, 25.

The high-profile case highlights the dilemma facing social workers who must both protect the welfare of babies and vulnerable adults with disability, but at the same time protect the rights of those adults to lead fulfilled lives.

Mr. McDougall told a newspaper that he and his fiancée decided to leave Scotland after they saw the minutes of a meeting in which social workers claimed their child could suffer emotional harm if left with Miss Robertson.

The [UK] Sunday Times carries an excerpt from Sarah Palin’s memoir in which she describes the “the problems and the joy of living with her special needs son.”

“Did I have enough love and compassion in me to do this? Don’t you have to be wired a little differently to be gifted with the ability to raise a special-needs child, a child who isn’t “perfect” in the eyes of society? I didn’t know if I should be ashamed of myself for even thinking these things.

“I read that almost 90% of Down’s syndrome babies are aborted – so wasn’t that a message that this is not only a less-than-ideal circumstance but also one that it is virtually impossible to deal with? Now, just a couple of hours into this new world, I could not get my arms or heart around it. That fleeting thought [abortion] descended on me again, not a consideration so much as a sudden understanding of why people would grasp at a quick ‘solution’, a way to make the ‘problem’ just go away. But again, I had to hold on to that seed of faith.”

(Photo from the [UK] Sunday Times)