Disability Rights
Disability rights advocates have been among the earliest and most vocal critics of emerging human genetic and assisted reproductive technologies. They are acutely aware that technologies enabling the selection of “good” genes and “normal” traits can devalue the bodies and ultimately the lives of people with disabilities. These concerns are grounded in histories of discrimination and abuse, notably the twentieth-century state-sponsored sterilization projects in dozens of U.S. states, and the Nazi campaigns to exterminate hundreds of thousands of disabled people in German medical facilities and concentration camps. Today, disability rights advocates ask whether innovations such as embryo screening and gene editing for reproduction are likely to create a future that respects or devalues difference and disability as a part of the human condition.
This article was cross-posted on Disability Remix, the blog of the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San...
From next-generation prenatal tests, to virtual children, to the...
Published November 17, 2022
The prospect of using CRISPR gene editing in reproduction is often justified by claims that it will eliminate disease and disability. But these claims draw on societal narratives that devalue people with disabilities. In this roundtable conversation, Silvia Yee (Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund), Larkin Taylor-Parker (Autistic Self Advocacy Network), and Teresa Blankmeyer Burke (Gallaudet University) explore how new disability rights narratives can challenge uses of genetic and reproductive technologies based in ingrained ableism, and promote futures in which disabled people flourish. Rebecca Cokley (Ford Foundation) moderated the discussion.
Full transcript and additional information about the speakers and topic can be found on the CGS website: https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/in...
This event on November 14, 2022 was co-sponsored by Center for Genetics and Society and Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.
Center for Genetics and Society: https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund: https://dredf.org/
Published March 2, 2023
This two-part online CGS event centers social justice and human rights, presenting voices and perspectives from feminist, disability rights, reproductive rights and justice, racial justice, environmental, and human rights movements and scholars, who question whether heritable genome editing has any place in a fair and inclusive future. Day 2 of the symposium includes two panels: "Missing voices speak out," featuring Larkin Taylor Parker, Abril Saldaña, Dana Perls, and Nourbese Flint, and moderated by Emily Galpern; and "Genetic justice beyond the summit," featuring Isabelle Bartram, Maria Ní Flatharta, Milton Reynolds, and Katie Hasson.
This two-part online CGS event centers social justice and human rights, presenting voices and perspectives from feminist, disability rights, reproductive rights and justice, racial justice, environmental, and human rights movements and scholars, who question whether heritable genome editing has any place in a fair and inclusive future. Part one took place on February 27, 2023 and features CGS Executive Director Marcy Darnovsky discussing history and context of the Summit process, followed by Dorothy Roberts, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, George Annas and Silvia Yee (moderator) in conversation to discuss the social justice case against heritable genome editing.
Rosemarie Garland-Thompson discusses "Biomedical Ethics and the Existential Threat to Persons with Disabilities" at the Columbia Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the Department of Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
Catherine Kudlick (Longmore Institute, SFSU) offers opening remarks about the film Gattaca, followed by a panel discussion with Kudlick, Marcy Darnovsky (CGS), Sara Acevedo (California Institute of Integral Studies), Lawrence Carter-Long (Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund), Dominika Bednarska (Performer/Activist), and moderator Karen Nakamura (UC Berkeley).
The event, co-sponsored by Center for Genetics and Society, Superfest International Disability Film Festival, San Francisco Public Library, and UC Berkeley's Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, was held at San Francisco Main Public Library on March 8, 2018.