No Faith in My Fellow Human Beings

Last week I had a highly rewarding exchange of emails with a woman who is detailing her end of life experience at thedrsays.org. She is experiencing congestive heart failure and wants to die with dignity and in peace. We started our exchange as I left a cranky comment about her positive response to the Dr Oz I railed against on assisted suicide. Despite our different views we showed each other a great deal of respect that is all too often lacking when end of life issues are discussed. She is facing some very difficult decisions in the very near future. I wish her and her family well. I also urge you to read her work. It is important in large part because she is a living example that modern medical care and medical technology have created impossible ethical conundrums. I do not envy the decisions she and her family will be making. Thankfully it seems she has an excellent rapport with her physician and support of a loving family. As a veteran I am pleased to know she has received appropriate supports in terms of health insurance.

There is no proverbial but coming in this post. Rather an observation: many people who are nearing the end of their life know little or nothing about disability. Disability simply has never touched their lives or members of their family. Disability is an abstract concept and disability rights a foreign idea. But the woman I exchanged email with does have some experience. In her response to me she concluded by noting in "Dr. Oz, Montel Williams and the Bad Cripple" "my mother had polio as a child and is truly crippled by it. she has 3 daughters and growing up with her it never occurred to me that she would be better off if she took her own life. that is one reason I don’t worry about the slippery slope. we are smart enough to make the distinction between someone with a debilitating terminal illness and someone who is disabled. maybe i just have more faith in my fellow human beings."

In these few words a great divide is revealed. Those that favor the right to die with dignity are capable of seeing that those with a disability are not the same as those with a terminal condition. As this woman notes she has faith in her fellow human beings and based upon this faith is not afraid of the slippery slope. I love this sentiment. I do not share her faith or optimism in others. I do not trust the medical establishment. By medical establishment I refer to the medical industrial complex that dictates care in this country. I am even less inclined to trust my fellow man, the ordinary person, like the people on the Dr. Oz show that appeared to be happy to let anyone suffering to end their life with the full support of the medical establishment. In the case of the Dr. Oz Show anyone with a disability was clearly suffering, had little dignity, and deserved to die. The emotions of the show not the few facts put in evidence scared me. It scared me because as much as doctors would like to contend medical care is a hard science there is as much art as there is science in medical care. Culture I assure you rears its ugly head in every aspect of medical care and medical technology. By extension, culture is a significant variable in the way we die. We do not discuss end of life care--we never have and at this point given the very real ethical issues we now encounter at the end of life we as Americans desperately need to discuss the matter. We need a national debate. It is for this reason I found my exchange of emails so satisfying. Our respective views were questioned and subsequently more clearly articulated. We both learned much from a person we had a serious disagreement with.

In thinking about my email exchange and in particular the passage I quoted, I was reminded of one of my favorite books in disability studies, Make Them Go Away by Mary Johnson. In her book Johnson seeks to answer a seemingly simple question: Why is there so little support for disability rights? Well, most people do not equate equal rights with disability rights and few liberal rights organizations support the disability rights movement. The net result is many people do not think people with a disability are a minority group subject to discrimination. I find this line of thought baffling. Prejudice is rampant and it takes much more than 40 years of law making to change our deeply ingrained beliefs. When I bring up the issue of disability rights and closely tie it it other civil rights movements the most common reaction is disbelief. More than a few people have rolled their eyes and some simply say I am full of bull shit. In response I will acknowledge no one wakes up in the morning and thinks I will discriminate against a person with a disability today. But that does not mean prejudice does not exist. And this is why I do not trust my fellow human beings. The prejudice I encounter as a person with a disability is deeply ingrained. It is ever present in the form of a lack of social supports, inaccessible housing and mass transportation, employment, poverty and the list goes on and on. Think of one word--disenfranchised. When all these socially constructed barriers are eliminated I will have faith in my fellow humans. For now, I am not swayed nor do I feel equal. This jaundiced view is not nearly as nice as the sentiments my email friend expressed but reflect the gritty reality I have experienced as a person with a disability.

Waking Man Circa 2012: Exoskeletons By Extension

I find technology magazines and technology geeks to be devoid of any social awareness. I thus avoid such publications with one exception--i like to read about how technology people envision the future. Such predictions are almost always wrong--spectacularly wrong. Think the Jetsons wrong. My son sent me a link to a typical envisioning the future article. I was not enthused but he always has a good reason for sending an article to me. I am interested in not only the content of any link he sends but wonder what inspired him to send it in the first place. As a parent I am interested in knowing how his mind is working as a college student. As lunch time approached today I printed out the link, "23 Incredible New Technologies You'll See by 2021". Imagine my chagrin to read that paralyzed people will be walking by 2012--well sort of walking. This claim is grossly wrong but that is not the point. I now get why there is no chance my favorite invention to make fun of, the exoskeleton, will not go away.

Under the heading The Paralyzed Will Walk there is the proverbial but. The paralyzed will be walking but "not in the way that you'd imagine. Using a machine-brain interface, researchers are making it possible for otherwise paralyzed humans to control neuroprostheses--essentially mechanical limbs that that responds to human thought--allowing them to walk and regain bodily control". A photograph is even included of a man, muscular arms crossed with a skull cap on and hundreds of wires running down his back. Looks to me like dread locks gone wrong! It also sounds a lot like a high end exoskeleton. Deep pockets have been invested in the exoskeleton. What I call the cure industry has embraced this costly idea that has dubious value at best. It made me think how lucky I was to be paralyzed 33 years ago. Modern rehabilitation was being formulated in the 1970s and 1980s and patient care came first. Today things are radically different. Present day rehabilitation is both terrible and wonderful. The truly terrible part is the cure industry that sells false hope and preys upon the newly paralyzed who are fixated on walking. Don't get me wrong, cure for paralysis is a worthy goal as we humans were designed to be bipedal. However a modest bit of research shows we are a very long way from anything that resembles a cure for paralysis. For a practical person such as myself, that means moving on with life using a wonderful alternate means of locomotion--the wheelchair. A spectacular invention that empowers millions of people. In part this is why I hate the idea of the exoskeleton: it glorifies walking as the one and only means of locomotion. This sends a bad message to paralyzed people. Essentially walking is good, wheelchairs are bad. Let's look at it this way and see the folly. Imagine are a paraplegic such as myself. I have the following choice. To start my day I can transfer from bed to wheelchair and go. Time involved less than 30 seconds. Alternatively I can put on a skull cap with dozens of wires and then strap over half my body into "neuroprotheses". Call me crazy but this does not sound like it is an efficient use of time or movement. And here is where culture rears its head. We Americans value technology--the more complex and involved the better. Thus we will dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the exoskeleton but categorically refuse to provide the most basic support services for people with a disability to lead an ordinary life. This makes no sense and many paralyzed people suffer as a result. Needless social isolation and rampant unemployment is the norm. How I wonder can this be tolerated?

I would like to identify something positive about the development of the exoskeleton but have utterly failed. However, there is no doubt in my mind researchers will continue to spend vast amounts of money into the development of the exoskeleton. The reason for this was made clear in the article. Apparently "the same systems are also being developed for the military, which one can only assume means this project won't flounder due to a lack of funding". Great, just great. The real market for the exoskeleton is not paralyzed people but rather its military development. I guess we need the exoskeleton so military men and women can carry hundreds of pounds of gear. Given how insidious the military industrial complex has been weaved into the fabric of American society since World War II the exoskeleton will continue to be well funded. A cash cow even. At the same time states nation wide will cut services for people with a disability with popular legislative support. What a world.