- A report by a disabililty rights group finds that Wisconsin continues to use physical restraints on children even after the practice led to the death of a 7-yer-old girl at a treatment facilitytwo ears ago, the Milwaukee [WI] Journal Sentinel reported. The girl died from asphyxiation in 2006, a day after being wrestled to the ground and held down face first in a chokehold for over an hour by caregivers at the Rice Lake Day Treatment Center.
- A blind woman was turned away from a Indian restaurant in Exeter, Britain, for having a guide dog because it was deemed a health and safety hazard. Emma Donnelly, 20, was told that her dog Yasmin was a health and safety hazard and was not even allowed in the door of the restaurant. She was turned away even though she carries a card issued by the environmental health department certifying she and Yasmin are allowed into any premises. Ms Donnelly has now complained to the disability rights commission and the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association which is supporting her case. Full details here ...
- A trial started for an Illinois teacher accused of physically abusing three autistic students, the Chicago Tribune reported. According to prosecutors the 32-year-old male teacher dragged students around his classroom and once slammed a child's head into a cabinet after he overturned a desk. He also allegedly forced a student to wear a weighted vest and bounce on a trampoline for 40 minutes.
- Bint Alshamsa over a My Private Casbah wrote this post titled "That's right, Caledon! Screw the Disabled Kid, right?" about a three-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who has been asked by the Caledon town committee to give up his miniature pony after a neighbour complained about the smell.
- Canada's paralympian Chantal Petitclerc has been named winner of the 2008 Lou Marsh Award. The award, named fter a longtime Toronto Star sports editor, goes to Canada's top athlete, either professional or amateur, as judged by a panel of journalists and sports figures. Petitclerc won five gold medals and set three world records at the Beijing Paralympics. More details here ...
- Check out the latest Review of Disability Studies blog entries here. Topics include "Moving Disability Studies Forward", "Normals and Crazies", and "Youth Suicide."
- Thaddeus Pope from the blogspot Medical Futility wrote a post about a February 2009 symposium to be held by the Georgia State University Law Review The 25th Anniversary of the Baby Doe Rules: Perspectives from the Fields of Law, Health Care, Ethics, and Disability Policy. Nationally-prominent experts in the fields of neonatal medicine, law, ethics, and disability policy will explore controversial issues involved in treatment decisions for premature and other medically at-risk infants. Speakers include Mark Mercurio, Burke Balch, Sadath Sayeed, Tom Mayo, Mary Crossley, Loretta Kopelman, Robert Truog, Ellen Waldman, and William Winslade. A highly publicized and controversial case involving the withholding of medical treatment from a “Baby Doe” with Down syndrome gave rise in 1984 to the federal law known as the Baby Doe Rules, which went into effect the following year.
