From the [Toronto, Canada] National Post:

Barbara Farlow and her husband Timothy are facing what is expected to be the end of their legal challenge to Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children over the 2005 death of their daughter Annie, who had Trisomy 13. If a judge rules today that the case cannot be heard in small claims court, as expected, the Farlows have said they will withdraw their challenge for lack of funding.

Barbara Farlow has claimed that the hospital denied Annie proper treatment, issued a “do not resuscitate” order without her parents’ consent, and gave her a lethal dose of painkillers as part of  an unspoken policy to deny life-saving treatment in the case of infants with genetic disorders.

She says she wishes not to blame doctors but to provoke a broader discussion about the discriminatory policies used to treat children with disabilities.

[Barbara Farlow] said the trend in genetic screening for birth defects is “discriminatory,” in that people who choose to terminate genetically abnormal pregnancies are offered care and support, but those who choose not to are “on their own.” Once Annie was born, she alleges, she was falsely told doctors would provide life-saving care for her respiratory distress and other ailments related to Trisomy 13, when in fact, she alleges, they intended to let her die naturally.

Earlier posts here and here.

(Photo from the National Post)

From the San Francisco Chronicle, CBS:

United Parcel Service tentatively settled a lawsuit Tuesday by agreeing to give employees with hearing loss accommodations for testing and training so that they can compete for jobs driving small delivery vans. The agreement awaits approval by a federal judge.

U.S. Department of Transportation regulations require drivers of trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds to pass hearing tests, but employees sued the company for applying the same standards to its smaller vehicles.

UPS argued that deaf drivers were more likely to get into accidents because they couldn’t hear sirens, screeching tires or other danger signals. Plaintiffs in the nationwide suit said they were unfairly confined to low-level jobs as loaders and sorters despite records that showed they were safe drivers.

“This first-of-its-kind class action on behalf of deaf and hearing-impaired employees broke new ground and made new law,” said Todd Schneider, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

An editorial in the Denver Post says action is needed to assure that kids with disabilities are being treated fairly in admissions to charter schools. A recent story found that only 6.9 percent of students enrolled in Colorado charters in 2007-08 had identified disabilities, as compared with 9.7 percent in all schools.

We would like to see that gap close … Charters and the districts that authorize them need to do a better job of ensuring that children with disabilities are getting a fair shake when it comes to charter schools.

The promise of choice is one that ought to be extended equally to all students, including those with disabilities.

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)

From the Denver Post:

Colorado state data shows that the state’s charter school enroll fewer students with disabilities on average than non-charter schools. Critics have long contended that charters skim off the highest-performing students, excluding those with more complex needs.

Data from the current school year shows 9.7 percent of the state’s students have disabilities, as compared with 6.9 percent of those enrolled in charter schools.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The Georgia State Department of Education has announced it will stop funding a nationally lauded interscholastic sports program for kids with disabilities. The future of the program is now in doubt, as the state’s $705,000 contribution had amounted to about 85 percent of the program’s budget.

“I would like for them to appear, to speak to the kids in person and tell them why … why the kids aren’t worth the money,” said the mother of a student who played wheelchair basketball.

A DOE official said the cut was prompted by the state’s dire economic problems  and did not reflect poorly on the performance of the nonprofit American Association of Adapted Sports Programs, which serves 4,700 public school students in Georgia.

Tommie Storms, AAASP’s co-founder and director of operations … said she expects anger about DOE’s cut to spark discrimination lawsuits and energize a push for federal legislation guaranteeing the rights of disabled school athletes, similar to Title IX for girls.

When President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his Supreme Court nominee today, he said he had sought a candidate who would bring, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, not just logic but experience …

“… experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers. It is experience that can give a person a common touch and a sense of compassion, an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live.”

Early press reporting on the nomination has interpreted Obama’s comments as referring to Sotomayor’s status as a woman and a Latina, the daughter of Puerto Rican immigants who grew up in a housing project in the Bronx.

But Sotomayor’s life journey also includes at least one other noteworthy aspect. She is a person with a disability: Type One diabetes, diagnosed when she was eight years old. People with diabetes are generally covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Sotomayor’s diabetes prompted renewed discussion among internet commentators about whether her health status should be considered when assessing her suitability for the high court post. See:

• A matter of health for SCOTUS nominee — April Fulton, NPR’s health blog
  
• Stop worrying about Sonia Sotomayor’s diabetes — Kate Daily on Newsweek’s ‘The Human Condition’ blog

In an interview with the New York Daily News in 1998, Sotomayor said her disability shaped her career choice. People with diabetes weren’t allowed to become detectives like her hero Nancy Drew, she said she was told, so she decided to become a lawyer instead.

See also:

American Diabetes Association applauds Sotomayor’s nomination — press release. The nomination …

… “affirms that people with diabetes should not be discriminated against and each person with diabetes should be judged based on his or her merits, not on stereotypes or misinformation about diabetes.

… As this process moves forward, the diabetes community expects that Judge Sotomayor’s nomination will be evaluated based on her qualifications and years of experience – and not her diabetes. To evaluate her in any other way would be a disservice to the United States.”

Earlier posts here and here.