How Trump Exemplifies Our Ableist Culture
By Steven W. Thrasher,
Scientific American
| 10. 07. 2020
It was a grotesque sight: the president of the United States preening from the White House balcony, his mask pulled defiantly off his face, able to infect anyone around him with the novel coronavirus. He had just been released from Walter Reed hospital, after he’d tweeted that we shouldn’t “be afraid of COVID” or “let it dominate your life”—as if it hadn’t already killed more than 200,000 people in the United States alone, including a dear friend of mine.
The coming narrative was depressing, predictable and sadly bipartisan: the president was virtue-signaling that he was a strong man who had beat a terrible disease. He hadn’t let COVID-19 win—he’d crushed it. He was dancing on the graves of people who had let themselves die because they were weak. Like gloating Jair Bolsonaro after he’d defeated the virus on Brazil’s COVID-19 battlefield, President Donald J. Trump was now a COVID survivor—and if he could be, so could you. If you encountered the coronavirus, had “good genes,” and were just plain strong enough, Trump seemed to be saying...
Related Articles
By Editorial Staff, The Lancet | 07.20.2024
Image by DrKontogianniIVF from Wikimedia Commons
Despite major advances in securing sexual and reproductive rights globally, one aspect is continually neglected: infertility. Evolving gender norms and financial precariousness have led to delayed childbearing, which increases infertility in both males and...
By Mesha Maren , Salon | 07.20.2024
By Julia Black and Margaux MacColl, The Information [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.19.2024
When venture capitalist Jack Abraham first began dating his wife, Gabriella Massamillo, he insisted on one condition: that when they were ready to have children, she’d be willing to conceive using in vitro fertilization. Abraham had lost both his mother...
By Robert Resta, The DNA Exchange | 07.22.2024
Medical geneticists and genetic counselors have an often complicated and at times tense relationship with people with disabilities, their families, advocates, and scholars. Geneticists are strong advocates and supporters for all of their patients, regardless of their abilities and disabilities...