Growth Attenuation: A Cultural Mess

I consider myself to be a disenfranchised individual. I will never fit into mainstream society. I will never be accepted. My presence always open to question. My humanity will be subject to public debate. My ability doubted and belittled. Bigots abound. They love to accost me in the name of "safety", "concern" and have my best interests at heart. This is an old story. I don't like it and have railed against social injustice for decades. What sobers me is that I am lucky, very lucky. I can defend myself and am quite good at it. I also know the bigotry I encounter is minimal when compared to people, humans, with a cognitive and physical disability. No other population in American receives less support and services. No other population is as stigmatized. This is outrageous. Much can be learned from those who care about people with profound cognitive and physical disabilities. Thus I deeply admire the scholarship of a people like Eva Kittay and Allison C. Carey. I urge you to read Kittay's recent edited volume Cognitive Disability and its Challenge to Moral Philosophy and Carey's wonderful book On the Margins of Citizenship. This provides the academic context but cannot replace touching thought provoking blogs such as Life With a Severely Disabled Daughter and Single Dad, Disabled Daughter that detail what it is like to parent a person with a profound cognitive and physically disability. This bring me to why I am posting today.

Within the past 48 hours I have read two posts on growth attenuation no doubt in part inspired by the articles in the Guardian (see my posts on March 15 and 16). Both writers are adamantly opposed to growth attenuation. Both are passionate about their opposition. Single Dad Disabled Daughter writes that he considers growth attenuation to be "immoral mutilation". The words mutilation were used when growth attenuation exploded in the news but its usage has waned as has the moral outrage. I do not know if the lack of moral condemnation is good or bad or somewhere in between. I do know that in spite of the efforts of the Seattle Working Group and the publication of their paper in the Hastings Center report on growth attenuation it firmly remains a polarizing issue. It also highlights how poorly understood disability is from a cultural standpoint. Equality and an inclusive society is not to be found in blue wheelchair logos, ramps, elevators, and wheelchair lifts. Obviously our physical environment is far more accessible and the law is firmly in our favor. But this only gets people with a disability so far. Utterly absent is cultural acceptance and a social mandate to protect the rights of people with a disability--any disability.

In referring to his severely disabled daughter Single Dad writes: "We don’t need just physical accessibility. Nowadays there is a lot of that. But when was the last time you saw an adult changing table anywhere other than my house? Even “family bathrooms” (and I just learned what they are) may have infant changing tables, useless to us. Where is there a quiet place, if needed, anywhere for the disabled? Pearlsky loves IKEA and Home Depot and the symphony, but sometimes it becomes a bit much. How fast can we get back to our van? There is no other place to escape to. If I could just pick her up … We need either mental accessibility, growth attenuation, or … what we have now."

Sorry but no. Just no. No! Mental accessibility is decades away. By this I suspect Single Dad means cultural acceptance and inclusion I referred to above. He cannot find a changing table for an adult because there is no social mandate for it to exist. He cannot find a quiet place because people do want those with a cognitive and physical disability to be in their mix. He cannot get on a plane because the airline industry has been hostile people with a disability for decades. This is not a question of architecture but rather a society deciding the best way to cope with people like his daughter is to exclude them. Shunt them off to group homes or resource rooms in schools, transport them on short buses. The message is very clear. Segregation is socially accepted. People with a disability, especially those with a cognitive disability, are different, not equal.

Is growth attenuation needed? In a word, no. Could it in exceedingly rare instances after all other avenues of care have been exhausted be appropriate? This is possible. I am not willing to put an outright ban on growth attenuation as such absolutes make me uncomfortable. I will not deny growth attenuation will make caring for a person with a profound cognitive and physical disability physically easier but is that really the answer? I think not. How about appropriate social services or even better comprehensive services. What about providing not just some but all needed adaptive equipment that would make care giving easier. How about community support. How about home modifications designed to meet the needs of the person in their home. None of this is available without a fight. Some simply is a pipe dream--the comprehensive services for instance. Again, this is a social problem.

What we have now in terms of growth attenuation? Again, no. Growth attenuation has gone underground. It is being done in secret and privately. Doctors are avoiding ethic committees, ethical oversight and skirting the law. This is frightening. It is exactly what the Seattle Working Group did not want to happen. If growth attenuation is performed we must study the long range implications. Are children subjected to growth attenuation getting strange cancers as they age like some women have whose growth was attenuated in the 1950s? We can only learn how effective growth attenuation is if it is studied in earnest. Only then can we address if it is truly an effective treatment.

Growth attenuation is a radical treatment. Whether opposed or in favor, there is something deeply unsettling when doctors are removing healthy organs from children. I question whether we are targeting a specific population of people, treating them as a class apart. No one would ever suggest attenuating the growth of a child with typical cognition. The idea is repugnant. But it is a solution for children with profound physical and cognitive disabilities? Worse yet, we willing remove healthy organs yet deny the very same people with cognitive and physical deficits organ transplants as a life saving treatment. To me a very powerful social message is being sent. People with cognitive and physical disabilities are not fully human, they do not have the same human rights. We have been down this road before in America and elsewhere. One example should suffice. Eugenic sterilization. We look back in horror at what took place. Read Edwin Black's searing work, War Against the Weak and be ashamed. But dig deeper and think about one state, North Carolina. Long after eugenic sterilization was discontinued 7600 people were sterilized against their will some as young as 14 years old.

I do not maintain growth attenuation is akin to eugenics. But some of the lessons learned from this dark chapter in American history are worth consideration. Will we look back aghast that we attenuated the growth of children with profound cognitive and physical disabilities? Will the Ashley Treatment be seen in the same light as we now regard to the famed Oliver Wendell Holmes statement about three generations of imbeciles is enough when deciding Buck v. Bell?

I rarely if ever close a post with a quote. Long ago I was taught not to do this. The idea being leave the reader with your own words. But I lack the passion and experience a parent of a child that has a profound cognitive and physical disability. So I end with Claire Roy's forceful words at Life with a Severely Disabled Daughter that I hope will sting readers to the core. I know this is how they affected me.

"We are a stupid people, loathe to study and learn from our collective history. We have burned the witches, strung up the niggers, gassed the kykes, lobotomized the crazies, beat up the faggots all in the name of what was right and good. We look back now, in horror at our primitive ancestors’ sins, failing to remove the mote in our own eyes. Disability rights…especially the rights of those most severely affected…are the final frontier of civil rights action. Sadly, I suspect a few more generations of dehumanization of our most vulnerable will pass before any sort of serious political action will take place to bring about real change.
And mark my words, the day will come when we see growth attenuation for the misguided barbarism that it is. On that day, be I the age of Methuselah, I will stand up and point my finger vigorously and without qualms say “I told you so.”