Man with Disabilities "Not Worth Saving"

The next time you are tempted to scoff at folk with disabilities who worry that they many people think their lives are not worth living, remember this story. Two medical technicians from the UK have been arrested for allegedly deciding that the life of a man with disabilities wasn’t “worth saving” from a heart attack. From the story:

Friends and colleagues who have disabilities report similar stories of disdain occurring here when seeking medical care, for example, of people on ventilators being pressured to sign DNRs by hospital personnel even though they were not undergoing usually life-threatening procedures. A friend who is legally blind had her white cane thrown down a METRO escalator in Washington D.C., as her assailant told her she belonged in a concentration camp. She also reports not being picked up by cabs. Then there is the general public applause for Jack Kevorkian and suicide tour guides for helping people with disabilities kill themselves.

Human exceptionalism demands that each of us be deemed to be of equal objective moral worth. It is an ideal we have never achieved, admittedly. But unless bigotry against people with disabilities is especially shocking when it impacts care in the medical context.