Medical

Treatment
and the
Disabled
People it
Seeks to
Help

?
Youre working hard to become a doctor or
a scientist because you want to help people
with disibility, to do good. But the biomedical
definition of disability can stigmatize those
with disabilities. It blames the disability on
the individual and fails to represent the actual
challenges and life experiences many face.
The Social Model of disability says its the
systemic barriers and societal prejudices that
turn a physical or mental impairment into a
disability.

Lets look at five cases of disability from

the Disability Studies perspectives of...
1. Medical vs. Social Model
2. Who can represent who?
3. Intersectionality

Fixing
Whats
Not
Broken

Deafness:
Cure or Culture?
Medical Model:
Medically and culturally, we consider loss of hearing a devastating handicap. So an invention that allows deaf children
to hear and communicate through sound should be greeted
as a miracle and made available to all deaf children. Right?
Were talking about Cochlear implants, a surgically
implanted device that can provide a sense of sound to the
profoundly deaf. This doesnt cure deafness, as it does not
restore normal hearing. But the implant can give a deaf
person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and help him or her to understand speech. (1)
However, patients must also undergo intense therapy to
learn how to interpret the signals from the implant as sound
and words. It works best in infants who are just learning
language. If successful, deaf individuals may be able to integrate better into mainstream society.

Social Model:
As a previously untreatable condition, deafness has generated a fully functioning, rich Deaf culture, complete with its
own language. Now, infants with Cochlear implants may never learn sign language. Efforts to eradicate deafness threaten
the survival of the Deaf culture and language, whose members see their condition as a valuable and defining trait rather than as a disability.

Inspiration? Or Misrepresentation?

Hearing parents

often have no connection to the Deaf

culture before the birth of their deaf child. They want to be
able to communicate with their child give them a promising
future, so opt for implants and speech training. But Deaf culture affiliates may insist that being born deaf innately makes
a child a member of the Deaf culture (2), and medically altering a childs cultural traits is ethically wrong. The American
Society for Deaf Children (3) says a deaf child has the right to
grow up bilingual - and therefore bicultural - to fully develop
their cognative and social capabilities.

The Supercrip Story

The public face of disability, the inspirational poster, the
heart-wrenching ad soliciting donations, typically features the supercripthe disabled individual that has supposedly overcome
the odds and beat their disability, accomplishing something
the able-bodied population considers impossibly for the disabled
body to accomplish.

Coming together....

Culture and cultural diversity is generally considered

good, so if a disability actually enables one to experience a culturea unique way of experiencing the
worldthen it cannot be so easily categorized as bad.

The rags to riches, overcoming adversity, story is central in

American culture. So when an amputee climbs a mountain, an
autistic child becomes the star of the basketball team, or a quadriplegic relearns how to walk, we love it. The story of the supercrip reminds us that people with even greater obstacles than our
own can also achieve their dreams, if only theywework hard
enough. The internet abounds with such stories, shares virally
on social networking sites and motivational blogs. Overcoming
disability stories appear as something everyone agree is good.

As medical professionals, we must recognize and educate parents that a medical cure is not always the answer. Giving the child language and rich acculturation,
through implants or not, is most important.

Blaming the Individual

Like how women often feel inadequate from endless comparison to celebrities bodies, the prevalence of the supercrip represen-

tation of disability can cause a feeling of inadequacy in disabled individuals who cannot achieve super-status. (7) Even worse, while
its common knowledge that celebrities do not represent reality, the
supercrip is the major representation of disability. So, rather than
be reassured when they fail to live up to this representation, disabled
individuals may be further looked down on by society for
not working hard enough to overcome their disability. The recognition that this is a false standard is not there.

The overcoming adversity story makes it the individuals responsibility to figure out a solution to a problem, indirectly blaming the adversity on the individual.
This is counter to Social Model, which attributes the disability
people with impairments experience to societal structure and cultural bias. By idealizing the supercrip, society refuses to take responsibility for experienced disability.
Perhaps if society abandoned the social stigma of disability, and
widely incorporated universal design, there would be no need
for the supercrip because a disabled individual interacting with society in a normal way would be just that, normal.

Autism: Fear vs. Acceptance

Obesity: the new disability
Medical Model:
The War on Obesity. Fat, lazy Americans. Medical professionals and society blame the
individual directly for being obese; they are seen as lazy and lacking in self-control. Obesity is a problem because it leads to many other serious diseases, most notably Type II Diabetes, heart disease, and impaired mobility. Not only is obesity disabling, it is often a sign of poor overall health.

Social Model:
Treating obesity as an individual problem that a little steady dieting can fix is NOT
Fittness and nutrition are major problems, especially among the obese, but do not equal
thinness. Accepting obesity means accepting body-type diversity. The way the problem is worded needs to change: instead of focusing on losing weight, we must focus on healthy weight.

TRUE. (8)
So before you post or pin that amazing story of a disabled
person you dont know, know you are representing a group
in a way they may not want to be represented. Representation is power. Are you in a position to hold this power?

Old Age in a Youth-Centric World

As our bodies age, they begin to deteriorate. Common
age related health problems include: Alzheimers, Parkinsons, dementia, incontinence, cancer,
heart disease, arthritis, stroke, diabetes, insomnia,
osteoporosis, lung diseases, hearing and vision loss,
depression, etc. Reliance on the healthcare
system and on care by others increases as individuals
age and develop age related impairments. (11) Families often find it necessary to move their elderly relative into a nursing home for better care.

Autism, with its spiraling rate of diagnosis, is,

unreasonably, the modern parents worst fear.
Individuals with autism fall on a large spectrum of severity. Regardless, the treatment
goals are similar; to provide intensive therapy
and behavior education in an attempt to mitigate as much as possible the symptoms of autism that are deemed so incompatible with
our highly social, extroverted society.
Behavioral intervention such as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) (4) makes the lives of both
the parents and the child more enjoyable, as
often outbursts and difficult behaviors are a
childs attempt to communicate and deal with
what they perceive as hostile surroundings.

Social Model:
The Neurodiversity movement promotes that
difference in mental functioning is not something to
be cured, but to be celebrated. Autistic self-advocates argue that their autism offers them a rich way
of experiencing the world that people with normal
mental functioning cannot understand or enjoy.
Autistic author John Robinson argues that rally cries
to get rid of autism are a personal attack on autistic people who see their autism as part of their
identity. (5) Rather, we should focus on developing therapies to address symptoms such as lack of
speech, and increase societal understanding and
awareness of diverse forms of neuro-functioning.
Even research now suggests that autism is not due
to something wrong with the brain, but rather just
something different; a different way of receiving and
processing information from ones environment. (6)

Thin culture leads to body image issues and poor self-esteem, which can lead to depression. (9) The
overweight individual loses their ability to represent themselves to themselves, and
instead internalizes the blame and shame that society projects onto their body type.
Obesity has strong intersectionality with poverty, as does disability. (10) Lack of access to
fresh produce, availability of fast food, lack of safe outdoor spaces or free time to exercise all contribute to an unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle. A cycle of poverty, obesity, and disability form as the
individual disabled by obesity is unable to find good work, and remains or falls into poverty.

Medical View:

Medical Model:

Social Problem:
Elderly people with physical and mental impairments experience an additional level of disablement due to the stigma against old age. This is
due to intersectionality with American culture that idolizes the young.
Ageism results in lack of repect or value of elderly. Age-related impairments that would not cause serious disability in a culture that valued their
elderly and so cared for them, are incredibly disabling when one must continue to live independently or be confined to a nursing home.
Our cultural value on independence makes accepting assistance incredibly
difficult for some elderly people. (12)

Conflict over Autonomy

Whose right is it to decide

when someone should be
placed in a nursing home?
Parent? Child?
Everyone ages: how can we
keep our place as a value to
society without catering to
the youth-centricism?
Disability Studies matter, because with age, we will all become disabled in time.

Towards Acceptance:

Fear of autism represents intersectionality with Western cultural norms that value social skills
above all else. While its vital that autistic individuals learn to communicate with others, we
must respect and encourage the unique abilities of the autistic mind.
Sources:
(1) U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
(2) Lane & Grodin. (1997). Ethical Issues in Cochlear Implant Surgery. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 7.3
(3) Grosjean, Franois. The Right of the Deaf Child to Grow Up Bilingual
(4) Rocque, Bill. Science Fictions: Figuring Autism as Threat and Mystery in Medico-Therapeutic Literature.
(5) Robinson, John. The Cure for Autism, and the Fight Over It. 10-12-2009
(6) Armstrong, T. (2010). Neurodiversity: Discovering the extraordinary gifts of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other
brain differences. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Lifelong.
(7) Marie and Brent Hardin The Supercrip in sport media: Wheelchair athletes discuss hegemonys disabled hero
(8)Anna Kirkland. Whats at Stake in Fatness as a Disability?. Disability Studies Quarterly Winter 2006, Volume 26, No. 1
(9) Kathy J. Kater, LICSW. Promotion Of Healthy Weight: Helping Without Harming. Connect, Teachers Innovations in
K-8 Science, Math and Technology, Synergy Learning, Vol. 19, #5, May-June, 2006.
(10) James A. Levine. Poverty and Obesity in the U.S. Diabetes November 2011 vol. 60 no. 11 2667-2668
(11) Chappell NL, Cooke HA. 2013. Age Related Disabilities - Aging and Quality of Life. In: JH Stone, M Blouin, editors.
International Encyclopedia of Rehabilitation.
(12) Associated Press. Ageism in America. updated 9/7/2004 4:47:30 PM ET. nbcnews.com.
Infographic by: Kaia Barth