From Reuters:

A survey commissioned by ELDR magazine found that over 80 percent of Americans surveyed believe the choice to end one’s life is a personal decision.Two-thirds said they favor the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. Nearly half of the 1,000 people polled said they could eventually become the primary caregiver to elderly family members or friends. The survey was conducted by Knowledge Networks.

Survey results here.

From the Los Angeles Times:

A young woman walked into a restaurant last week and sat close enough to get a good look at Anne Hjelle’s face. A mountain lion had torn off the left side four years before, leaving it hanging by a flap of skin. Six surgeries hadn’t camouflaged the scars.

“She saw me and had a deer-in-the-headlights look,” said Hjelle, 35, of Mission Viejo. “She quickly got up and moved so she didn’t have to look at me.”

The stranger’s reaction didn’t hurt Hjelle’s feelings.

“I’ve had to learn the hard way that beauty comes from within,” she said.

… Soon after leaving the hospital, Hjelle — a personal trainer who had a model’s looks — put away the hats and sunglasses she used to hide her face. She started to put her hair in a ponytail. She wasn’t going to be ashamed.

“I could have curled up into a ball or gotten on with my life,” said Hjelle, a former Marine helicopter mechanic. “It’s not easy, but I wanted to conquer my fears — just like you do in mountain biking.”

From the Toronto Star:

Toronto’s Don McKellar is interviewed in Cannes, France, about his upcoming film, which depicts the panic and violence that follows an unexplained epidemic of blindness. The film, starring Jualianne Moore, was chosen to open the Cannes Film Festival this week and will also compete for the coveted Palme d’Or.

McKellar is hoping viewers will recognize Blindness as a film that deals in bigger ideas than just terrifying people.

“We shouldn’t be scared of blind people. They’re not monsters. To me, humanity is exposed when people are blind; they’re not dehumanized.”

McKellar’s previous high-profile film about global calamity was Last Night, his directorial feature debut a decade ago about the end of the world.

Earlier post, with video, here.

Says government is too quick to dismiss possible link

From CBS News, the New York Times and elsewhere:

(15-second commercial precedes video)

Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, tells CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson that the question of a link between vaccines and autism is still open for debate. Her comments came as the United States Court of Federal Claims began another hearing to decide whether the vaccine additive thimerosal led thousands of children to develop symptoms of autism.

“I think that the public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational,” Healy said.

“But public health officials have been saying they know, they’ve been implying to the public there’s enough evidence and they know it’s not causal,” Attkisson said.

“I think you can’t say that,” Healy said. “You can’t say that.”

Healy goes on to say public health officials have intentionally avoided researching whether subsets of children are “susceptible” to vaccine side effects — afraid the answer will scare the public.

(more…)

From the New York Times:

Activists like writer/blogger Liz Spikol (left) and USC law professor Elyn Saks are speaking candidly and publicly about living lives with mental illness, promoting awareness and acceptance of people with such diagnoses as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

“Until now, the acceptance of mental illness has pretty much stopped at depression,” said Charles Barber, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. “But a newer generation, fueled by the Internet and other sophisticated delivery systems, is saying, ‘We deserve to be heard, too.’ ”

About 5.7 million Americans over 18 have bipolar disorder, which is classified as a mood disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Another 2.4 million have schizophrenia, which is considered a thought disorder. The small slice of this disparate population who have chosen to share their experiences with the public liken their efforts to those of the gay-rights and similar movements of a generation ago.

Just as gay-rights activists reclaimed the word queer as a badge of honor rather than a slur, these advocates proudly call themselves mad; they say their conditions do not preclude them from productive lives.

Columnist Michael Gerson, writing in the Washington Post, argues that liberals who pledge an unswerving support for ’scientific integrity’ are eroding the core American principle that all men are created equal. Gerson joins Yuval Levin, writing in the New Atlantis, pointing to the eugenic practices of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as evidence of the moral pitfalls of purely scientific reasoning.

Nazism largely discredited the old eugenics. But a new eugenics — the eugenics of genetic screening and abortion, the eugenics of genetic selection in the process of in vitro fertilization — is alive and well.

Its advocates contend that the new eugenics is superior because it is voluntary instead of compulsory, and unrelated to race. But Levin responds: “Surely the most essential problem with the eugenics movement was not coercion or collectivism. . . . The deepest and most significant contention of the progressive eugenicists — the one that made all the others possible — was that science had shown the principle of human equality to be unfounded, a view that then allowed them to use the authority of science to undermine our egalitarianism and our regard for the weakest members of our society.”

Although progress has been made, attitudes still need improvement

From CBC News, Canada:

Parents of children with special needs in Canada say they still must be full-time advocates if their children are to succeed. Among the problems they face are social exclusion and a lack of adequate schooling.

“People are under the assumption that people with disabilities are taken care of,” says Zuhy Sayeed, past-president of the Canadian Association for Community Living, an organization that advocates for people with intellectual disabilities and their families. “Most Canadians see the ramps. They see agencies for people with disabilities. So they really wonder what our issue is.”

The issue is that a ramp in front of a door does not always translate into accessibility. Full inclusion means offering supports, like classroom aides. It means awareness and training, so that staff know how to handle it when a child with autism behaves differently. It means being open to new ways of doing things when necessary …

“Just bringing your child into a mainstream classroom does not mean integration,” points out Jean Ju, a psychologist at the Ottawa Children’s Treatment Centre. If no other supports are in place, children can’t participate, Ju says.