From ABC News:

Because summer camps traditionally don’t serve kids with disabilities, specialty camps designed specifically for them are cropping up around the country.

“Summer camp is just part of Americana, and if you’ve got children with particular special needs it’s just very difficult for them to readily fit into a mainstream setting,” said Sean Nienow, the director of the National Camp Association. “Camps are set up with a lot of physical activity and are not set up to cater special needs.”

ABC profiles some specialty camps:

• Camp Twitch and Shout (outside Atlanta) for children with Tourette’s syndrome;
• Adventure Amputee Camp (Bryson, N.C.) for children with amputations;
• Cap I-Thonka-Chi (Meridian, TX) for children with traumatic burns;
• Camp Sunshine (outside Atlanta) for children with cancer;
• Camp Heartland (Minneapolis) for children who are infected with HIV/AIDs or have family members who are; and
• Camp Celiac (North Scituate, R.I.) for children with celiac disease.

… One boy at the Adventure Amputee Camp spoke for all the special needs campers when he was asked what he liked best about camp: “No one is staring, asking what’s wrong with you or criticizing your faults.”

See also:

‘At Camp Twitch and Shout, Tourette kids can be themselves’ – CNN

(ABC News photo)

From the Washington Post:

A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama’s calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life “rationing” and even “euthanasia.”

The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills.

… on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as “guiding you in how to die,” “an ORDER from the Government to end your life,” promoting “death care” and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to “kill Granny.”

Defenders of the legislation, including lawmakers, the American Medical Association and the AARP respond that the accusations are untrue, offensive, and even cruel.

Earlier posts start here.

Rebecca Reisner, writing in Business Week, says an obscure end-of-life provision in the administration’s health care proposal is stoking passions in the “conservative blogosphere,” with claims that it is a step toward government-mandated euthanasia.

During an AARP-sponsored town hall meeting earlier this week, a woman told the President: “I have been told there is a clause in there that everyone that’s Medicare age will be visited and told to decide how they wish to die. This bothers me greatly, and I’d like for you to promise me that this is not in this bill.” Obama replied that the intent of the provision was to promote advance planning and living wills.

Advocates of the measure say critics have misinterpreted the provision, while opponents are contending that their criticism of it has been misunderstood. An AARP spokesman criticized “baseless scare tactics put out by those who seek to derail health-care reform.”

See also:

False euthanasia claims: The claim that the House health bill pushes suicide is nonsense — Factcheck.org

Earlier posts here, here and here.

By Carrie Budoff Brown in Politico:

Legislators and political commentators are sparring over a provision tucked deep inside the House health care reform bill that would provide Medicare coverage for an end-of-life consultation once every five years, and more frequently for a life-threatening illness.

House Minority Leader John Boehner and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) have issued a statement saying the measure “may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.”

Betsy McCaughey, a former New York lieutenant governor and conservative health expert, said the measure amounts to pressure on vulnerable elderly and chronically ill people. “… it is not offering a service. It is pressuring them,” McCaughey said. “I would not want that to occur when I am not at my parents’ bedside.”

Proponents of the measure say it would not make the consultation mandatory. They say critics are using irresponsible rhetoric to drive a wedge between senior citizens and Democrats.

Earlier post here.

From the Miami Herald:

A school for hospitalized and homebound kids in the Miami-Dade School District is facing closure because its students don’t score well on standardized tests. School district officials say kids at Merrick Educational Center, who have conditions like cancer and brain injuries, shouldn’t be held to the same standards as other kids.

“The whole process is demoralizing for the students, the parents and the teachers,” the school’s principal said.

By Timothy M. Phelps in the Los Angeles Times ‘Top of the Ticket’ blog:

In all the questioning of Sonia Sotomayor, there was no discussion of one of the more interesting aspects of her nomination: She may be the first person named to the court in recent times with a known, serious chronic illness such as diabetes.

Phelps writes that Sotomayor’s longevity on the court could be limited in comparison to Republican appointees, even if she manages her condition well.

But other experts on the disease say it will be a valuable thing to have the perspective of such a person on the court. In 1999 the court decided that workers with treatable medical conditions, such as diabetes, were not disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act and therefore could be fired because of their medical problems. The decision provoked an outcry, and last year Congress changed the law to protect people like Sotomayor.

From the BBC News and New York Times:

The deaths of noted British conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife, Joan, have reopened  an international debate about assisted suicide for the terminally ill. The pair drank a lethal cocktail of barbituates at the Swiss right-to-die clinic, Dignitas.

Friends said that Sir Edward, 85, was not known to be terminally ill but he wanted to die with his wife, who was said to have had terminal cancer. Sir Edward was principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from 1980 to 1991, and had led performances at Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London for more than 50 years. He was described by his children as “almost blind and increasingly deaf.”

The House of Lords last week defeated a bill that would have allowed people to travel abroad to help people with terminal illness commit suicide. Attempting suicide has not been a criminal offense in Britain since 1961, but assisting others to kill themselves is.

“With imminent health cuts, growing numbers of elderly people and increasing levels of elder abuse the very last thing we need is to put vulnerable people, many of whom already think they are a financial or emotional burden to relatives, carers and the state, under pressure to end their lives through a change in the law,” said Peter Saunders, an official with the group Care Not Killing.

See also:

‘I’m bossy. I’m ambitious. I love ideas. And I love life’ – Guardian

Baroness Campbell: Believe me, I absolutely love my life – Telegraph

Disabled peer pleads against legalizing assisted suicide – Guardian

Earlier posts here.

(Photo from the New York Times)