Disability Rights

Articles
Videos
Books

ARTICLES:

Richard Dawkins Gets it all Wrong, Yet Again
by George Estreich, Salon
September 25th, 2014

Australian Couple Leaves Down Syndrome Baby with Thai Surrogate
by Lindsay Murdoch, The Sydney Morning Herald
July 31st, 2014

A Disability Critique: Why Members of the Disability Community Oppose Prenatal Diagnosis
Marsha Saxton, law.miami.edu
2012

Making Embryos Healthy or Making Healthy Embryos
Adrienne Asch, The healthy embryo
2010

Unspeakable Conversations
Harriet McBryde-Johnson, The New York Times Magazine
February 16, 2003.

Disability and Bioethical Debates: Speciesism and Moral Status
Peter Singer, Metaphilosophy 40
July 2009
pp.567-581.

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VIDEOS:

Markets and “Symbolic Harms”
Adrienne Asch, The Tarrytown Meetings, 2010

George Estreich Web Interview
George Estreich - June 3, 2013 Talking Biopolitics Web Interview

Regan Brashear Web Interview
Regan Brashear - October 3, 2013 Talking Biopolitics Web Interview

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BOOKS:

The End of Normal: Identity in a Biocultural Era
Lennard Davis

In an era when human lives are increasingly measured and weighed in relation to the medical and scientific, notions of what is “normal” have changed drastically. While it is no longer useful to think of a person’s particular race, gender, sexual orientation, or choice as “normal,” the concept continues to haunt us in other ways. In The End of Normal, Lennard J. Davis explores changing perceptions of body and mind in social, cultural, and political life as the twenty-first century unfolds. The book’s provocative essays mine the worlds of advertising, film, literature, and the visual arts as they consider issues of disability, depression, physician-assisted suicide, medical diagnosis, transgender, and other identities.

The Shape of the Eye
George Estreich

In this wise and moving memoir, George Estreich tells the story of his family as his younger daughter, Laura, is diagnosed with Down Syndrome and they are thrust into an unexpected, unfamiliar world. . . .

Mendel's Dwarf
Simon Mawer

Like his great-great-great-uncle, geneticist Gregor Mendel, Dr. Benedict Lambert struggles to unlock the secrets of heredity and genetic determinism. However, Benedict's mission is particularly urgent and particularly personal, for he was born with achondroplasia--he's a dwarf. He's also a man desperate for love and acceptance, and when he finds both in Jean, a shy librarian, he stumbles upon an opportunity to correct the injustice of his own, at least to him, unlucky genes.

Patents based on traditional knowledge are often ‘biopiracy’. A new international treaty will finally combat this

By Miri (Margaret) Raven, Alana Gall, Bibi Barba, and Daniel Robinson, The Conversation | 06.02.2024

Aggregated News

^{Image by Ahmet Kurt from Unsplash}

Last week, at a conference in Geneva, the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organisation agreed on a new treaty aimed at preventing the for-profit piracy of traditional knowledge.

So-called “biopiracy”, in...

Other Countries

‘Eugenics on steroids’: the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute

By Andrew Anthony, The Guardian | 04.28.2024

Aggregated News

Two weeks ago it was quietly announced that the Future of Humanity Institute, the renowned multidisciplinary research centre in Oxford, no longer had a future. It shut down without warning on 16 April. Initially there was just a brief...

Society

The Unexpected Plight of Whistleblowers

By Emily Beitiks, Guest Contributor | 05.10.2024

Biopolitical Times

If you’re looking for a book where good triumphs over evil, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Cost of Saying No, isn’t it. But hear me out: you were looking for the wrong book, and you will understand why if you give this a read.

Carl Elliott, Professor of Philosophy and Medical Ethics at the University of Minnesota, provides a nuanced look into the history of medical research scandals and the whistleblowers who bring these stories...

Arts & Culture

Why the Newest Lindbergh Baby Conspiracy Theory Isn’t All That Out There from a Disability History Perspective

By Emily Beitiks, Guest Contributor | 02.09.2024

Biopolitical Times

The 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son was called the “crime of the century” at the time, and has inspired more and less plausible theories about what really happened ever since. The San Francisco Chronicle has recently covered a new wave of interest in the case, based on retired judge Lise Pearlman’s 2020 book that builds on a theory that’s been around for decades: that the celebrity aviator himself was implicated, and the man executed for the...

Eugenics