Disability, "being unhealthy," and rights to health.
Often advocates for persons with disabilities strongly object to the claim that disability essentially involves a decrement in health. Yet, it is a mystery why anyone with an impairment would ever deny, or feel uncomfortable being told that, their impairment is at bottom a health problem. In this paper, I investigate the conceptual linkages between health and disability, relying on robust conceptualizations of both notions, and conclude it makes no conceptual sense to insist that a person can be seriously impaired yet still be, or become, "perfectly healthy." But that cannot be the end of it since this kind of error is commonly made, and I try to tease out the reason why not only disability advocates but agencies like the WHO and the CDC fall victim to it. I conclude by conceding that there are indeed sound political reasons for being cautious about the alignment of disability and ill-health, but suggest that the price we pay in conceptual confusion may be too high to allow those reasons to dictate policy.
Head of the Disability Policy Unit of Swiss Paraplegic Research and a Professor at the University of Lucerne.
Jerome
J
Bickenbach
D004185:Disability Evaluation; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006304:Health Status; D006806:Human Rights / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006801:Humans