From CTV.CA, London [Ontario] Free Press:

TORONTO — The father of an autistic teenager who has camped out at the Ontario legislature for more than a week is vowing not to eat until the province agrees to eliminate the backlog of children waiting for a crucial but costly therapy.

Stefan Marinoiu, 49, who has been drinking nothing but water for eight days, is trying to put pressure on the province to deliver the treatment more quickly to autistic kids, including his 15-year-old son Simon.

Marinoiu’s goal is to eliminate by November the wait list of 1,148 eligible children who are still waiting to receive intensive behavioral intervention therapy, or IBI.

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.

From the Wall Street Journal:

New York’s Museum of Modern Art conducts tours for people with visual impairments, encouraging them to don disposable gloves and explore selected works. The tours have been going on for 35 years. Other museums offering similar programs include Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago and New York’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

“I’ve had people say ‘how can you give tours to the blind?” said [lecturer Richard] Turnbull, who in addition to his chores at MoMA is chairman of the art history department at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “They don’t understand it’s possible to appreciate art in ways that are not entirely visual. People who actually can see a work don’t see it the same way another sighted person does, so in a lot of ways this program is all about the plurality of experience that people have with works of art.”

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

From the BBC:

The United Nations is celebrating the coming into force of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) — a landmark agreement that aims to give the world’s 650 million disabled people full equality. The measure took effect earlier this month after the 20th nation ratified it, in this case Ecuador.

So far some 25 countries have ratified the convention — starting with Jamaica in March last year. The largest nations that have already ratified it include India, Mexico, the Philippines and South Africa. Spain, Hungary and Slovenia are the only EU nations on the list so far.

… disability campaigners in the UK are critical of their government’s “reservations” on residential care, segregating education, employment in the armed forces and freedom of movement for disabled people with regard to nationality and immigration

… It is estimated that about 10 percent of the world’s population lives with some sort of disability, making disabled people the world’s largest minority. This figure is likely to increase as a result of medical advances and the world’s aging population, according to the World Health Organization.

… In some countries, disabled child mortality is as high as 80 percent even when the general level of mortality for the under fives has dropped below 20 percent.

See earlier posts:

• Op-ed: Washington’s phobia of global treaties
• World leaders urged to act on disability rights

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.

From the Associated Press in the Kansas City Star, the Kaiser Network:

The U.S. will spend an estimated $59 billion or more annually in 2033 to compensate disabled veterans, compared with $29 billion annually currently, according to internal Department of Veterans Affairs documents obtained by the Associated Press, the AP/Kansas City Star reports.

… The decline in the total number of veterans is attributed to older veterans from World War II and Korea dying. However, the total number of disabled veterans has increased 25% since 2001 to 2.9 million, compared with a 4% increase during the six-year period before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, according to data from the VA and U.S. Census Bureau. Advances in medical care are helping injured veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars stay alive after “devastating injuries” that likely would have killed veterans from earlier wars, according to the AP/Star.