by frog
Early this month the Human Rights Review Tribunal released the landmark decision Atkinson and others v Ministry of Health. The case involves the Ministry of Health’s policy of denying financial help to family members to care for severely disabled relatives, despite such help being available to caregivers who are not family members.
The Human Rights Review Tribunal found that the Ministry’s:
…practice and/or policy of excluding specified family members from payment for the provision of funded disability support services is inconsistent with section 19 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 in that it limits the right to freedom from discrimination, both directly and indirectly, on the grounds of family status and is not, under section 5 of that Act, a justified limitation.
But instead of agreeing to amend the policy to make it compliant with the NZ Bill of Rights Act, the Government has decided to appeal the decision. In a waffly media statement, Health Minister Tony Ryall said:
The Solicitor General strongly advises me that there are very significant legal issues about the decision that need to be examined.
However, he was somewhat more frank with Radio New Zealand:
The Government says it’s appealing against a ruling of the Human Rights Review Tribunal because the country cannot afford to pay people to look after their own severely disabled family members.
…Health Minister Tony Ryall says paying people to look after their disabled children is not where the Government wants to go.
What’s next, I wonder? Repeal the Equal Pay Act so employers can pay their women workers less and claim it is justified discrimination on the grounds that it would improve productivity? I’m surprised the Brash Taskforce didn’t come up with that one… Oops, better stop – I might be giving them ideas!
Curiously, the financial implications of paying people to look after disabled family members which Ryall now appears to be relying on, does not appear to have been strongly argued by the Ministry. The Tribunal found:
As to the important issue that such a policy is needed for reason of financial sustainability; we have found no evidence to show, convincingly and unarguably, that the financial impact of a policy to pay family members currently excluded by the policy would not be sustainable. Certainly, a detailed assessment does not appear to have been undertaken when the policy was first formulated and in subsequent years, to date.
It will be an interesting appeal indeed if the Ministry is relying on evidence of financial implications that simply doesn’t exist.
Published in Health & Wellbeing | Justice & Democracy by frog on Tue, January 26th, 2010
Tags: disability, disability support, Don Brash, Human Rights Review Tribunal, Ministry of Health, tony ryall
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
no surprises there…
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Gee, if it’s costing too much, why not start a Euthanasia [(from the Greek ευθανασία meaning "good death"] program, it would pay off in no time.
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I suspect that the appeal is just a holding action while they legislate to allow them to continue to discriminate against caregivers who are family members.
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While I believe the idea is a principled one, in speaking to a member of my family who works in the area of finance of heath care, her comment was that the practice of funding or subsidising family care to seriously ill, injured or disabled family members would be:
“A new service…requiring a new source of funding” – So if you support the idea, then be prepared for either a tax increase, a drop in some other service, or some shuffling of funding.
“Not operationally viable” – We didn’t go in to detail on this in our e-mail exchange, but I suspect this is stuff like, what do you pay someone who is professionally trained/certified vs. Joe Bloggs who may have no formal training (Or What do you pay Jane Bloggs if she DOES have training?).
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Yes, it would be new funding, but it seems from the Tribunal’s decision the Ministry did no work when developing the policy to not fund family members to determine the likely quantum of it.
As far as the operational viability of it is concerned, there was evidence before the Tribunal relating to ACC, which does pay family members to provide care for people with serious disability:
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All very nice, but what existing service do you plan to cut to fund it?
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@BluePeter
Can’t give you an answer BP, or even confirm that any service would have to be cut, because I have no idea what it would cost. Nor, it seems, does the Ministry of Health.
From the Tribunal’s decision it appears that the discriminatory policy to exclude family members from payment as caregivers was developed in the 90s with no work having been done on what paying them would cost.
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If you want to have the government start this sort of funding, then you’ll have to pay $2 tax for every $1 you earn.
Because if it is a breach of human right for families not to be paid for looking after disabled relatives, then they should also get paid for any care for looking after elderly relatives. Perhaps they have them for a meal once a week, or take them on holiday. If care workers get paid for that, then it follows that it must be a breach of human rights if relatives don’t get paid for it.
And what about children. Childcare facilities get paid for looking after children.
It’s clearly a serious breach of human rights if parents don’t get the same payment for looking after their children, just because they are related to them.
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Adele – that would be a breach of human rights if you restrict it only to people you label “disabled” instead of all people who need help for their basic day to day needs – elderly, children etc.
You misinterperet my comments by reading things into them that are not there. There are elderly people in care in homes and being cared for in their own homes who simply cannot look after themselves. Others just need a bit of help.
The point is carers now do things like provide occasional meals, occasional help with showers or housework – do the Greens now want families to get paid for this as well?
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I’m sure everybody would like to be paid for looking after family members who cannot support themselves.
The truth is that this circumstance applies at some level to just about every family in New Zealand.
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“If you want to have the government start this sort of funding, then you’ll have to pay $2 tax for every $1 you earn.”
The Tribunal says:
You’re a wizard then, Photonz1, with secret knowledge beyond that available to the Tribunal?
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“And what about children. Childcare facilities get paid for looking after children. ”
Maybe stretching your argument to absurd lengths there P!
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greenfly says “Maybe stretching your argument to absurd lengths there P!”
Why? Many young children require more time and attention from their carers than disabled people.
And what about disabled children?
I would think that pretty much every family in NZ has either children, elderly, or disabled, who require at least some help to support themselves.
I can’t think of single family that I know that doesn’t have at least one person in one of these categories that they support in some way.
Do you want to discriminate between those caring for someone who can’t walk because they are disabled, and those caring for someone who can’t walk because they are old?
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photonz1 – I don’t think I have misinterpreted your comments at all- I very much doubt that the intention is that broad…I think you stretch the argument to support a government perspective that is very wrong for this country…
= there are other services available to cover general childcare and the needs of the elderly which are not intended to be covered by this discussion…
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I don’t know that ordinary children qualify Photonz1.
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The question really is if these walking (or not as the case may be) abortions should have been allowed to live in the first place.
Realistically if they can not look after themselves, and thus qualify for this payment, then they will not only never contribute to society but they sink precious resources and the productivity of the parents and caregivers. They are nothing but a drain and will never be anything else.
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greenfly – you are missing the point.
If it been ruled that it is against peoples human rights not to get paid when professional carers would get paid, just because they are a family member.
Exactly the same situation exists for elderly, so it is discriminatory to only apply this in one circumstance, and not exactly the same situation when someone is old.
And if professional carers get paid to look after children who cannot look after themselves, then it must be a breach of human rights not to pay a family member to do the same thing.
The ruling says that if a professional gets paid for caring for someone, then under the Bill of Rights Act you can not discriminate against a family member getting paid for the same work, just because they are a relative. This law applies to ALL work – it is not about one specific carer job related to one specific type of help.
In other words, anywhere where the government pays – care for disabled, elderly, children (or any other work) – it is discriminatory for others not to get paid for the same work just for the reason that they are related.
Similarly it may be illegal for parents doing home schooling not to get paid, just because they are related.
I have relatives who get transport for medical appointments paid for. Will I now get paid when I take them? (it’s illegal under the Bill of Rights to not pay me just because I’m related).
I have other elderly family members who get govt help with their lawns and garden. Will I now get paid on the regular occasions when I help?
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Sapient – I think you’re on the wrong site..go find one where your opinions are actually wanted…realistically if your idea of natural selection were taken on board, I think we’d all have crew cuts and a short moustache.. by the way you suit yours…
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photonz1 – you’re still stretching the story – is that designed to cloud the issue? That’s a good political tactic.. we can all spend a lot of time finding ‘other’ examples of human rights discrimination.. or we can be realistic, helpful and useful to these people who really do need some practical assistance..
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The Tribunal makes a clear distinction between “natural support”, which is the sort of thing that would normally be expected of any family, and “disability support” which is the additional support necessary because of a family member’s impairment and for swhich an assessment is required to qualify.
Specifically, the types of support the case relates to are Home Based Support Services, Supported Independent Living, Contract Board and Individualised Funding. Support required becasue of aging and injury are specifically excluded from the ambit of the case – they are funded through different funding streams.
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toad – you are missing the point too.
While the tribunal limits its findings to the case put in front of it, it is clear that the law itself doesn’t have this limitation.
The government can’t avoiding paying people for carers jobs just because they are related.
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Adele – I agree with giving these people some practical assistance.
But is turning every person giving care to a disabled person into a full time government employee, the best way to help?
Giving help this way has a large number of negative consequences that you don’t seem to have thought about.
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photonz1 – I can see NO NEGATIVE consequences in helping these people, in fact they will be developing new skills in the role which will allow new opportunities for further advancement in a new field, and possibly become a professional caregiver at some point.. I believe it’s called an apprenticeship!
Either your glass is half full or half empty photonz1, mines half full I can see what yours is..if you want to continue seeing the negative in everything perhaps you shouldn’t share…
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Adele – talk to anyone in government and they will tell you there are ALWAYS unforeseen negative consequences. Surely you are not so naive to think there would be none.
1/ Will cost a lot of money, so either people have to pay more tax (unlikely), or funding has to be taken from elsewhere.
Who would you take funding from?
2/ People may be enticed to take disabled relatives out of communal care, leave their profession, and care for them at home. This would a/ be much more expensive for taxpayers – where would you take funding from?, b/ removes someone from a potentially productive job and puts them in one that doesn’t produce anything c/ duplicates work that was already being done (and being done far more efficiently), d/ is not necessarily better for the diasabled person. e/ turns a person from someone paying tax into someone who is paid FROM tax.
3/ It may set a legal precedent where all home care for people who can’t care from themselves is paid for – under law it may already be illegal for the government to refuse payment for home care simply because someone is a relative.
4/ It will certainly set an expectation among a lot of people that it’s the governments duty to pay for all family care (maybe you already have this expectation?). I can see the start of a new type of intergenrational benefit dependency.
5/ As an employer, the government will be legally responsible that the workplace (home) is a safe place to work. Government paid house refurshishments will be all the rage (I know people who have found regulations to enable them to do massive renovations under current law, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars – some of them were needed, but much was excessive).
Under current health and safety law, the governemnt as employer will be responsible and liable for fines and convictions for any “work place” accidents, and in particular they will be required to give full training in all aspects of the carers work.
If the carer falls off a ladder, cuts their hand chopping veges, etc, the employer is responsible under OSH if adequate training has not been given for the specific task.
6/ People caring for relatives will now be entitled to holiday pay, legal maximum working hours, sick pay, superannuation, etc. They will be allowed to claim over-time if they have to do anything outside their 8 hour working day. Or we will need another whole level of paid helpers to do care outside of working hours
Considering the hours, overtime alone may equal several times the weekly wage of an average worker.
7/ If the work stops because of a death, or the person goes into other care, under employment law the relative will be entitled to keep their job or get a redundancy payout.
8/ If the government pay relatives for full time care, they will likely have to legally apply the same anti discrimination laws to part time work as well. Any help to any disabled relative may have to be paid for by law.
9/ They may legally have to apply the same law to any relative that required home help. If it is illegal not to pay someone just because they are a relative, if the same job would normally be paid for if the person wasn’t a relative, then one spiouse in thousands of elderly couples should be getting full time pay with all the benefits.
10/ A whole new government department and level of bureaucracy will have to come into force to administer it. Again, massive amounts of expenditure that make New Zealand LESS efficient, and LESS productive. Everything that makes us less efficient and less productive, makes us LESS able to provide any sort of government funding.
11/ The government is required by employment and health and safety law to adequately supervise it’s employees, requiring yet another tier of bureacracy.
12/ If the carer / employee injures, abuses or hurts the disabled person, legally the government as employer will be legally liable. Yet under huiman rights law it is forced to employ people who they may not consider suitable for the work.
13/ I think all the people in other areas that will have to have funding cut to pay for this will dissagree there are no negative consequences. Considering one in five people have a disability, this sort of scheme could make the DPB, dole and ACC seem like minor funding issues.
There is a whole can of worms by turning thousands of family members into full time government employees. It turns the home environment and carer into a place and person who are required to conform to a large number of quite strict laws and conditions
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@photonz1 11.35 AM
Your points:
1/ We don’t know what it will cost because the Ministry of Health developed its policy of excluding family members without doing anyu costings.
2/ It would actually be cheaper to pay a family member to care for a disabled person at home than to have them in communal care. It would give people with disabilities greater choice as to who their carer is. Some people are forced to have carers from outside their family because they cannot afford the loss of household income that would result from having a family member as their carer.
3/ The Human Rights Review Tribunal has determined that it already is illegal.
4/ No. The Tribunal made a clear distinction between “natural support” provided by families and “disability support”.
5/ No. The Government would not be the employer. The funding would be paid to the disabled person, who would contract the carer, just as happens with ACC.
6/ No, as per 5/ above.
7/ No, as per 5/ above.
8/ No, only help to any disabled relative that falls under the definition of “disability support” would have to be paid for by law. Help that is “natural support” would not.
9/ No, the crtiteria for home help is that there is no-one in the household who can do the tasks. Tasks like vacuuming and laundry are “natural support”, not “disability support”.
10/ Why a whole new government department. I can’t see why the Ministry couldn’t administer the additional payments, just as they administer disability support payments that are currently made.
11/ As per 5/ above, the carers would not be government employees.
12/ As per 5/ above, the carers would not be government employees.
13/ People only receive disability support if they are assessed as needing it. The vast majority of people with disabilities (including me) don’t need it.
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photonz1 – didn’t you read my comments? We don’t want you to share your drawn out melodramatic thoughts with us.. I wouldn’t speak to anyone about ‘unforeseen’ consequences, because if we all focussed on those we’d actually NEVER GET ANYTHING DONE!!
so..please.. hear me now.. find something else to do.. get off this blog.. maybe you should get a job? If you’ve got time to write those elongated verbal explosions then clearly you do not have enough to do… I am busy now, I have a life, I have had my say, and I DO NOT AGREE WITH YOU AND NEVER WILL.. so aurevoir and have a nice life..
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toad
1/ It’s blatently obivious that it will cost an enormous amount.
You didn’t say who you will take the funding from.
2/ We have friends with a disabled family members in day care. Of course it will cost much more if you start duplicating that care, and paying extra people full time wages to look after individuals, while still paying for communal care.
3/ So you say it’s already illegal – that reiterates my point. Spouses of elderly who need care are then legally entitled to be paid for their work.
4/ The tribunal did – the law doesn’t (as you said in 3/ it’s already illegal)
5/ So what happens when the family member goes on strike for more money, decides they can’t be bothered helping etc. The whole thing take responsibility away from faimilies and gives passes it all to nanny state.
8/ Where in the Bill of Rights does it say that human rights are limited to “natural support” only. That has been mentioned by the commision for this specific case, but the law doesn’t limit itself natural support – it applies to paid work.
9/ There is already paid part time support for people with disablities. Under the law, family members who provide the rest of the support (part time) will be discriminated against unless they are paid for the same work.
Are you suggesting that part time workers should be discriminated against?
10/ One in five people have some level of disability. This will be a massive new growth industry. It will no doubt sooner or later need a whole new department.
11/ If they are a contractor instead of an employee, they will need to do their accounts, get an accountant, and effectively are self employed or a company, so will need to do all the additional work associated with that. If they are a couple of days late doing their paye, gst, annual return, company return, fringe benefit, acc etc, they will get hefty fines.
Alternatively they could work for their family member via a home help company, which adds yet another level of middle-man to the new government levels needed, and means they’d be paid less.
13/ People only receive support if they need it? I will bet you a decent amount of money that if this comes to pass we will have an unprecedented increase in people with disabilities who can no longer get by without support.
It’s a massive encouragement for people to be LESS able.
With one if five with some level of disability, there’s huge scope for hundreds of thousands of families to cash in on this.
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Oh, I give up photonz1. There is no point debating with someone who seeks to distort and misdirect to the extent you do.
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toad – the original points are clearly still going over your head.
We don’t know how big it will grow, what precidents it will set, if it will legally have to include all sorts of other care, including elderly and part time, and we have no idea of the cost (that was even one of your own points).
Unfortunately there is an extreme left view that the government (read taxpayers) are an endless pit of money that should be exploited as much as possible.
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Now exhale….
I can see this has been chugging along while I was off the net overnight.
photonz,
it appears that your level of compassion for the disabled is slightly to the left of Ghengis Khan, and a little to the left elbow of Hitler. I’m sure they’d both appreciate your support for their policies, however here in NZ we tend to treat all of humanity as though they might be able to have a full and productive life, with a little support from appropriately trained health professionals and carers.
If at some future point in time you find that someone near and dear to you develops a condition that requires extensive disability support, I hope you are man enough to swallow your pride and put away your scruples to accept the offers of assistance from the State that come your way.
Having lived through a very sorrowful 3 months with a friend who though her baby was going to die, I can assure you that when he was diagnosed by a visiting paediatrician from London, then operated upon within 3 days at Greenlane hospital, we were all very grateful for the chance at life this gave her little boy.
After a series of heart operations during his pre-school and primary school years, he has grown into a wonderful young man, gifted and intelligent, and currently a university student.
He owes his life to the state-funded health system, and his parents have been supported by a wide network of government and ngo agencies during the past 18 or so years, as well as keeping up busy careers themselves.
They are just one family who have experienced disability; I meet young people on campus every year who have struggled all their lives to excell in the face of various abnormalities – they go through tertiary study, with a few extra facilities to tap into, and come out qualified to have a life that is meaningful.
Extra care for disabled children as they grow up is vital to creating this kind of outcome; but it’s not just the ones who are employable who are due our assistance, all children deserve the love and care of their family, and families who have multiply disabled children need carer support just to be able to function.
Once, we did this through residential programs at various kinds of in- and out-patient hospital units, but most of those were dismantled in the ’90′s to be replaced by a ‘care-in-the-community’ policy, which effectively returned patients to their families for life.
Carer support costs are nowhere near as expensive as keeping hospital units equipped, so any cost that is incurred by the State as a part of this policy is minimal compared to the cost of hospitalisation.
Now, are you going to offer a eugenics argument?
As it’s currently illegal, go ahead & justify it, I can’t wait to hear your position.
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YAY for Katie!!
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Doesn’t this bring down the value of professional care givers by handing out mini-wage to anyone weather they have had training or not.
I had a friend who worked in the industry and she was totally taken advantage of ‘mostly by her employer’, in the end it was costing her more to do the work than what she was getting paid, like she was some kind of charity and not a real job. My friend moved to OZ where she’s is getting paid 10x for the same work, I guess OZ values that kind of care and are will to pay a proper wage and not minimum wage without expenses.
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Adele,
No, I am on exactly the right site. I would also suggest my opinions are far more likely to be wanted here than yours as I can actually back mine up with arguments other that “its nice”. The correct site for you would be the standard; don’t worry I wont bother you over there.
As and aside, what I talk about is not natural selection, at least not on the individual scale. In fact, since it is rather unlikely that these abortions will breed there is little room for natural selection to play a part once they have been conceived. Realistically, if my ideas of eugenics, and I’m fairly sure that what you mean, were taken on board we would not turn into NAZI Germany overnight. Eugenics is used all over the world at present, it is just given a different name. There is no reason that society should support individuals which do not, and never will, contribute to society other than the ethical implications of not doing so. The ethical implications are tiny and irrelevant if done before the third trimester. Mental retardation that is not detectable in the womb is somewhat more difficult ethically. The average New Zealander is worth about $20,000 per year and the average haemophiliac costs about $300,000 American per year in drugs alone, it is not economic to allow such an individual to be born even if they can work. Here, the costs are less but the benefits are nil.
Apprenticeship? You mean these people whom will probably die before their children or only slightly before? Some useful apprenticeship that will be…
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Sapient – refer to Katie’s comments above regarding genghus khan and hitler – you definitely are in the same league as photonz1.. and yes you are a nazi…
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katie – you must have missed the part where I said I agree with giving family carers more practical assistance.
I just think paying family members full time employment is not the right way to go about it. Funding this way will create a number of problems that don’t currently exist.
I actually have a number of people near and dear to me who require a lot of care to vaying degrees, from tetraplegic to children and adults with downs, elderly, autistic and missing limbs, from immediate family to an uncle, aunt, a neice, and more distant relations and friends.
Most currently get quite a bit of help through various methods – some don’t get enough. Others get funded a huge amount more than they need.
Some have done everything they can to avoid getting help, and made their own way in the world best they can. Others have tried to do nothing except claim every dollar they can get their hands on.
No prizes for which attitude has come off best. So we have a situation of some, despite being LESS physically impared, staying at home and soaking up taxpayers dollars, while those with more severe disabilities have managed to do much more for themselves.
And no need be offensive and make up an argument and (falsely) insinuate that it is my position.
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“children and adults with downs, elderly, autistic and missing limbs”
Cripes! I didn’t realise there were so many things that could go wrong with ones arms and legs!!!
(I think I once had an autistic leg and I know one day I’ll have a pair of elderly ones!)
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Wow – you can make fun of disabled people – how clever and witty.
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photonz-
apology offered!
Just realised I conflated comments made by Sapient with your arguments.
I know many disabled people, too, and have found that in some parts of the country, people do better than others. If local employers aren’t keen to have an impaired worker in their workplace, no amount of ‘affirmative action’ thinking will get a person ahead. Some disabilities are discriminated against more than others, it must be said.
In my own case, most people would not be able to pick my condition, unless I actually collapsed in front of them & needed medical assistance. Only those close to me see the daily pile of medication, and the constant struggle to have enough energy to keep involved in the lively world around me. However, because I have had public service jobs that I left due to illness, it gets harder to get another such position – because my condition is noted on my permanent file. Thus, I have used the opportunity to upskill at tertiary level, although that has not been without its own particular trials lately!
Sapient-
to respond to your statements regarding abortion:
- as a feminist I support the right of any woman, at any age, under any circumstances to obtain an abortion.
Equally, I support the choice of any woman, any time, under any circumstances, to go through with the pregnancy and have her baby.
Because, you see, I have been in both of those situations – wanting to keep a baby who came along at an inconvenient time for her parents (married, but broke still!), and knowing that a child I was carrying was really the wrong person to be bringing into the world at that time (just as I found out my husband was having an affair, and my marriage would break up).
[Shunda, FYI, they're both live, beautiful girls, but I really would have stopped at two kids if I'd had the choice.]
I know that my youngest child has had a very different life to her oldest sibling, just because my resources were very stretched and her father was not focussing at all on our family. I know at what cost she had less input from me as a pre-schooler, and how much that has affected her self-image and worldview.
None of my children have severe disabilities – we all have some degree of allergy & asthma, and my son is mildly ‘aspergersy’, but very high-functioning. I have accessed Special Education Services for him when he was at primary school, just so that his teachers could manage to handle having him in the class of mostly average learners – he needed extension teaching! Just to get that much assistance (I think it was two hours a week, taken from class-time) was incredibly difficult, but very worthwhile. He learnt to look forwards to his extension classes, and to tolerate the ‘mediocre’ classwork which bored him in order to be allowed his extra classes. He still has some problems tolerating mediocre, boring classwork, but he is very keen in the subjects where his passions lie.
How much harder would it be for an intelligent parent to cope with a child for whom there is only limited scope for learning?
Most parents want the best outcome for their child/ren.
I acknowledge that there are some who should not be left in charge of children – you have mentioned overcoming a stressful upbringing with poor modelling, well you’re not alone there.
Giving adequate resources to parents is one way of overcoming repetition of these patterns; giving mothers an alternative to staying in abusive relationships is another.
Also, giving teenagers an option to get away from an abusive family by the means of the unsupported child benfit is another.
I know people who have overcome early life disadvantages through all of these means, and I consider these policies to be part of the toolbox of social strategies that we have as part of a humane and decent society.
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photonz1 – no, I was making fun of your ambiguous sentence structure.
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Thanks for the apology katie. Frustrated as you (and Adele) may get with commentors from the right at times, Godwining the thread with comparisons to Hitler and Genghis Khan does not add anything to the debate.
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greenfly, when the sentence states the disabilities apply to “a number of people” it’s not particularly ambiguous.
katie – I think employers are generally much better than they were, and I sense a general atmosphere of valuing workers much higher than in the past (look at all the efforts by many companies last year to retain workers when laying them off would have been the easy financial option).
We just need to keep the ball rolling and concentrate on what people can do – not what they can’t.
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Has anybody ever considered that disabled people may actually add something to our society?
Some pretty appalling attitudes here I rekon.
There is nothing more inspiring than a disabled person – physically or mentally, defying their comparative limitations and achieving far more than many more able bodied people.
Quite frankly I think these people are an asset not “walking abortions”.
The biggest burden to our society bar none is able bodied people that refuse to live up to their potential, people that spend all their functionality on nothing but shallow pursuits and poor mental “hygiene”.
The best attributes of the human race come out of adversity, we have no right to place value (or lack there of) on the life of people that are different.
I like my apples with the spots on.
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Adele,
There is a common convention (Godwins law) in internet debate that the first person to argue the other is a NAZI or Hitler automatically looses the argument. That aside, eugenics is something that has traditionally been highly supported by the academic community. It was taken by Hitler and performed in a inappropriate manner. The academic community thus tends to be silent on the matter but it is still very much, actually more so, supported by experimental evidence. Supporting eugenics is not akin to supporting the actions of the NAZI’.
As to the arguments put forward by Katie previous to your post, they relate only to the status quo and to emotion. The are thus both worth a total of nothing. Relating to her argument from experience, if the individual was able to achieve to the level stated then he is obviously sufficiently self-reliant to study and as such is not the target of the “should never have been born” argument. Should he have severe physical deformities then the safe option would have been to abort him, that something may have been missed is of little consequence statistically. Katie normally makes an argument about Hawking about here, but that too is of little consequence as, in the first instance, the statistics are not in favour, in the second instance, his disorder is late onset and only genetic in the vast minority of cases.
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Katie,
What? Where did that address the kind of kids I’m talking about? Also, I have already said that I support the DPB for exactly those reasons highlighted latter in the post.
I would not force anyone to abort. I would provide genetic screening free and the same for the monitoring of childhood development. I would pretty much say “the state will not provide support for individuals born with these disorders diagnosable before the third trimester”. They can have the child if they want but it is they whom will be supporting it, it would encourage them to abort and try again but would probably be of limited efficacy. It would result in a far better life for any resulting child and for the parent as well as the obvious benefit to society.
‘Aspergery’, ergh. That diagnosis makes me shiver. He either has aspergers or he doesint. High IQ individuals can suffer social impairment but it does not mean they have aspergers. Aspergers necessitates social retardation, not just impairment. Unfortunately doctors are very liberal with the diagnosis of aspergers where it is simply the result of a high IQ combined with the illogical nature of social relations. I struggle with social relations and while doctors seem to think that I have aspergers for which I have compensated, my reading of the subject shows strongly that I do not and they are suffering from confirmation bias.
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Shunda,
Like what?
There is a clear distinction between those that are able to go on and acheive something and those that will not acheive anything because they are not able to. The mentally impaired, normally detectable in the womb, will never contribute anything. Physical impairments are totally different, except for those lacking any limbs most of them can achieve things and those same people are able to support themselves in the long run, they are thus excluded from this. It is just a case of if a mother is willing to go through the stress of bringing them up given the choice prior to birth; if they are willing to carry that burden. Those that go on to achieve something are actually far more a case of female rights than of eugenics. As to people with biological problems such as hemophilia, they can easily support themselves, the problem is if their contributions to society are sufficient to justify the massive cost; I would suggest not.
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Richard Dawkins.
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“The mentally impaired, normally detectable in the womb, will never contribute anything.”
So we dook em out.
So how do you know they won’t contribute anything? they have a value of life test now? all these tests are 100% fail proof?
Lets be honest, prejudice drives a lot of all this, people just don’t want a damned retard for a kid, no matter how minor it could be.
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Shunda – well put.
I like rules, regulations and benefits that encourage people to do as much as possible.
And I dislike rules, regulations and benfits that encourage people to do as little as possible.
Unfortunately successive governments have spent years passing rules and regulations with negligent regard to the what incentives apply to their new laws.
It should be a law itself, that our polititians cannot pass a new law without fully taking into account what incentives and changes in behaviour the new law will give.
Time after time they pass blinkered laws that make us LESS efficient, LESS productive – that give us an incentive to do the WRONG thing, instead of what’s best for the country.
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Shunda,
There is no such thing as inherent value so therefore any test of such would be useless. Value must be defined in terms of a goal. In this instance a persons value is reflective of their contribution to society.
How can I know that they will be contributing nothing? It is not so much about them contributing nothing but contributing less than they cost. A person whom is mentally retarded will never contribute anything of significance, it is essentially part of the definition of retardation that they are useless. Given the substantial cost of supporting these people, it is simply not worth it. They are like a car that has no roof, no engine, a warped frame, a tank with thousands of holes, and yet for some reason you still pay registration and keep pouring fuel in to its tank.
Even assuming that one in a thousand retards contribute more than they cost, it is not worth it. Would you spend several times the normal price of a hammer which breaks 10% of the time on a hammer that doesint break one time in a thousand? It is simply an insanely stupid bet.
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Greenfly,
Richard Dawkins?
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The result of my failure to read closely
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Pilchard Stalkins
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Shunda,
How dare you make fun of the name of god! For this, you shall be stoned to death!
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The word is blasphemy or blaspheme Sapient! not “make fun”.
YOU shall be stoned for such literary sin!
And also for your insomnia – you are clearly a Witch!!
I of coarse am awake because I am watching for Witches
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Blasphemy? Blaspheme? Thou shalt not preach language to I, the scion of your lord! False though he may be.
I am not a witch, but a watcher of the witch watchers.
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At 1:01 AM, you just missed them (the witches, not the watchers, they’re yet to slope off to bed).
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The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now
Considering that Facebook itself is no longer looking out for you, it’s time to be proactive about things and look out for yourself instead. Taking a few minutes to run through all the available privacy settings and educating yourself on what they mean could mean the world of difference to you at some later point… That is, unless you agree with Facebook in thinking that the world is becoming more open and therefore you should too.
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/01/20/20readwriteweb-the-3-facebook-settings-every-user-should-c-29287.html?em
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Can you check that link, fly? Doesn’t work for me.
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Valis – the link works fine from my end but it may have an ‘exclude Satanists’ function built in.
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It works now. Shunda must have confused it.
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He did. And he was responsible for Auckland’s recent power-outage, that meddling Shunda and his mad mumbo-jumbo!
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Greenfly,
Damn it! The debate always gets so interesting when I make the claim that there is just as much proof, if not more, for my being a scion of Jesus than of Jesus’ divinity. A factual claim at that.
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Sapient – if you can prove the former and Shunda the latter, it would cast you in a very good (divine) light!
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Greenfly,
Perhaps, though I seem to remember something about the anti-christ comig from the line of David also, lol.
I have a family tree going back 1600 years, recorded in many texts. My personal copy goes back 800 with further residing in the libraries of Ireland. Past then it is many legends which seems to become more and more mythical as time reverses. It is unlikely to be true, infact I have good reason to believe those legends were doctored, but it is, after all, exactly the same for the story of Jesus and his divinity.
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I think I have discovered some DAY witches!!
And greenfly I did not interfere with Aucklands power.
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That was clearly the work of a Witch!!
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A universal benefit would fix this, if everyone gets a benefit then there would not be a mismatch of people trying to claiming random benefits from the government. Because there would only be one benefit then there would be less government money spent on high paid managers for flick paper. There would not no arguing over, this or than person doesn’t qualify.
I would be like a tax break and would be a huge cash injection into the economy and poor people spend more of their income that the rich people.
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I prefer the term ‘citizens divided’ to ‘universal benefit’, but otherwise it is a well discussed concept generally promoted by the left and (with a flat tax rate) by the right.
I do wonder about this cash injection though; where does it come from? A massive loan from overseas perhaps?
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