Online research in philosophy

Australia has traditionally considered itself to be in the forefront of nations committed to the recognition and respect of human rights, including the right to life of all human beings. Australia has signed and ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which codifies the right to life in international law. Australia has also signed and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which codifies both the right to life, and a related right to survival and development, for all children and young persons. Additionally, Australia is a wealthy country with relatively well-developed health and social security systems, which include a wide range of specialist services targeted specifically to persons with disability and their families. Together, these factors would appear to provide a strong foundation for securing the rights to life and survival of Australians with disability. However, beneath these calm waters lie deadly currents. This essay analyses the degree to which Australians with disability effectively enjoy the right to life, as it is understood in international law. We adopt an expansive understanding of the right to life that views the right to life as far more than an obligation on states to merely prevent and punish arbitrary deprivation of life, as important as this is. Instead, we argue that the right to life requires states to pursue a range of positive legal, social and economic measures to ensure that this right is fully realized, especially in a disability context. We argue that the rights to life and survival for persons with disability cannot be effectively secured without some transformation of traditional understandings of these rights, and we examine the potential for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to effect such a transformation.

: The social model of disability gives us the tools not only to challenge the discrimination and prejudice we face, but also to articulate the personal experience of impairment. Recognition of difference is therefore a key part of the assertion of our common humanity and of an ethics of care that promotes our human rights.

Feminist approaches to bioethics have the striking ability to usefully disrupt conversations otherwise in danger of calcifying into immovable opposing camps. Take, for instance, debates between theorists in disability studies and bioethicists who often take two different approaches to understanding disability. On one side are those such as Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, and Wikler (2000) who seek to locate the apparent functional deficiency of disability in biologically abnormal bodies. Let us call this a normal functioning approach to understanding disability. On the other side are those such as Amundson (2000a; 2005) who argue that to be paraplegic or deaf is not to be inherently deficient but different in ..

Three of the articles included in this issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - Ron Amundson and Shari Tresky's "On a Bioethical Challenge to Disability Rights"; Rachel Cooper's "Can It Be a Good Thing to Be Deaf?"; and Mark T. Brown's "The Potential of the Human Embryo" - interact (in various ways) with the concepts of disability, humanity, and personhood and their normative dimensions. As one peruses these articles, it becomes apparent that terms like "disability," "human being," and "person" carry with them great normative significance. There is, however, much disagreement concerning both the definition and the extension of such terms. This is significant because different terms and definitions are associated with different sets of normative requirements. In what follows we reconstruct the argument of each of the articles, and then offer some brief critical analysis intended to stimulate further thought about and discussion of the issues that each raises.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is about more than making sure that existing human rights are applied to persons with disability. It also subtly reformulates and extends existing human rights to take into account the specific rights experience of persons with disability. In fact, the argument can be made that the Convention comes close to creating new rights, or at least very new ways of seeing common rights. This suggests a deeper point about the fragmentation of international human rights law and the increasingly recognized need to take into account the irreducibility of the experience of certain categories of persons. The Disabilities Convention has some interesting lessons to teach about human rights more generally.

abstract In this paper I develop a characterization of disability according to which disability is in no way a sub-optimal feature. I argue, however, that this conception of disability is compatible with the idea that having a disability is, at least in a restricted sense, a harm. I then go on to argue that construing disability in this way avoids many of the common objections levelled at accounts which claim that disability is not a negative feature.

While disability has emerged as a major theme in academic and political discourses, a perusal of many bioethics textbooks reveals that most editors and philosophers still do not consider disability to be central to developing either critical perspective or social conscience in addressing the core questions in bioethics. This essay explores how disability issues are typically portrayed in bioethics textbooks by looking at the examples of genetic testing and medically assisted death. It explains how incorporation of disability perspectives helps to provide students with opportunities for a fuller understanding of many concepts that are central to moral and political philosophy, such as equality, justice, the good life, moral agency, and autonomy.

While disability has emerged as a major theme in academic and political discourses, a perusal of many bioethics textbooks reveals that most editors and philosophers still do not consider disability to be central to developing either critical perspective or social conscience in addressing the core questions in bioethics. This essay explores how disability issues are typically portrayed in bioethics textbooks by looking at the examples of genetic testing and medically assisted death. It explains how incorporation of disability perspectives helps to provide students with opportunities for a fuller understanding of many concepts that are central to moral and political philosophy, such as equality, justice, the good life, moral agency, and autonomy.

This paper asks whether statutory social insurance programs, which provide contributory tax-based income support to people with disabilities, are compatible with the disability rights movement's ideas. Central to the movement that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act is the insight that physical or mental conditions do not disable; barriers created by the environment or by social attitudes keep persons with physical or mental differences from participating in society as equals.The conflict between the civil rights approach and insurance seems apparent. A person takes out insurance to deal with tragedy, such as premature death, or damage, such as accidental harm to an automobile or home. Social insurance, for example, the United States Social Security old-age and disability programs, consists of government-run insurance to cover risks of advanced age and disability for which the private market has not provided affordable coverage. But the civil rights approach to disability posits that disability is not a risk, not tragedy, and not a damage or defect. Instead it is a maladaptation of society to human variation. This paper argues that a justification remains for social insurance under the civil rights approach to disability, and further suggests that expansion of social insurance for disability is both compatible with disability rights principles and supported by wise public policy.

Tensions exist between the disability rights movement and the work of many bioethicists. These reveal themselves in a major recent book on bioethics and genetics, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. This book defends certain genetic policies against criticisms from disability rights advocates, in part by arguing that it is possible to accept both the genetic policies and the rights of people with impairments. However, a close reading of the book reveals a series of direct moral criticisms of the disability rights movement. The criticisms go beyond a defense of genetic policies from the criticisms of disability rights advocates. The disability rights movement is said not to have the same moral legitimacy as other civil rights movements, such as those for women or "racial" minorities. This paper documents, and in some cases shows the flaws within, these challenges to the disability rights movement.