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

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.

‘Once a learning disability meant automatic exclusion from music, clubs and clothes. Meet the people blazing a trail to change that’

From the [UK] Sunday Times (with video):

A small but growing cultural movement in the UK is pushing for people with intellectual disabilities to be embraced by the “hipper pockets of society” that revolve around music, art, and fashion. Examples include a regular club night at a London gallery sponsored by the UK disability organization Mencap; Heavy Load, a punk band featuring members with learning disabilities; and a recent fashion shoot styled by three fashion lovers with learning disabilities.

The photo shoot was organized by photographer Rankin and stylist Gary Harvey, whose brother, Ian, with Down syndrome often accompanies him on photo shoots. Harvey said the stylists with disabilities bring their own creativity and verve, promoting conversations about the inclusion of diverse people in society.

For all the fun of the shoot, this area still contains deep, depressing and multifaceted issues. But cultural shame associated with learning disabilities is less than it was, and access to a real life, not some institutional pale imitation of it, is more available. Change, after all, is infectious.

Related post: British band fights for the right to ‘Stay up Late’

See also: Stayuplate.org

(Photo from Sunday Times video)

In a conversation with Claudia Dreifus from the New York Times, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Carol W. Greider acknowledges her struggle with dyslexia and says it influenced her to pursue the study of science. Greider, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, shared a Nobel Prize this week for her research on telomeres.

Q. Did you always want to be a biologist?

A. My parents were scientists. But I wasn’t the sort of child who did science fairs. One of the things I was thinking about today is that as a kid I had dyslexia. I had a lot of trouble in school and was put into remedial classes. I thought that I was stupid.

Q. That must have hurt.

A. Sure. Yes. It was hard to overcome that. I kept thinking of ways to compensate. I learned to memorize things very well because I just couldn’t spell words. So later when I got to take classes like chemistry and anatomy where I had to memorize things, it turned out I was very good at that.

See also:

Mild autism has ‘selective advantages’; Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith discusses his personal challenges with Asperger syndrome — NBC News

From the New York Times:

An increasing number of American babies are being conceived with the help of the fertility industry — at a cost. Experts say these children are disproportionately likely to be twins, and are at a heightened risk for disabilities including mental impairments, learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, and eye and ear impairments. An estimated 30 percent of twins end up in the neonatal intensive care unit, according to one government study.

Fertility industry leaders and government health officials have called on doctors to avoid the risk of twins, but doctors say strong financial incentives encourage them to implant multiple embryos. Further, they say, couples do not fully understand the risks.

A recent study by the March of Dimes said fertility treatments are one of the main reasons the nation has seen a 36 percent increase in prematurity in the last 25 years. The nation’s overall prematurity rate is 12.7 percent, which is regarded as a major national health care problem. The government estimates that the care of premature infants costs $26 billion a year.

(New York Times photo of Carter Hare at just over 24 weeks. He weighed one pound, 12 ounces.)

From the [UK] Guardian:

In a joint letter, a coalition of 15 charities complain that government policies in the UK are too focused on funding services for the elderly at the expense of people with learning disabilities. The advocacy groups said government policies inflict ‘needless hardship’ by ignoring younger age groups.

The Learning Disability Coalition of charities – which includes Mencap, the Down’s Syndrome Association, Turning Point and the National Autistic Society – says the government’s [policy] on care, published last week in a fanfare of publicity, virtually ignores those in younger age groups.

“You would think,” the letter says, “that after the neglect, abuse and institutional discrimination against people with learning disabilities revealed over the last few years … it would be hard to forget the one and a half million people with learning disabilities. Not so.”

From CNN:

A British punk band is campaigning hard to get fans with disabilities the right to party late into the night if they want to. Three of the five members of “Heavy Load” have disabilities, one with Down syndrome and two with learning disabilities.

Their campaign, “Stay Up Late,” encourages caregivers to support people with disabilities who want to stay out past 10 p.m. The campaign emerged because the shift for most support workers in the UK ends at 10pm, so most fans with disabilities ended up leaving by 9 p.m.

“We don’t insist on people staying up late against their will — just having the choice to do what they want to do!” said Heavy Load’s manager and bass guitarist, Paul Richards.

Earlier post here.

(CNN photo by Morgan White)