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Tag Archives: disabilities
Why autism rates have skyrocketed in the NYC metro area: study
Autism rates in the Big Apple have ballooned at a baffling rate.
Instances of Autism Spectrum Disorder have tripled in the New York-New Jersey metro area — from 1% of the population in 2000 to 3% in 2016.
That’s largely due to a growing number of diagnoses of children without intellectual disabilities, said researchers at Rutgers, in a new study published Thursday in the journal Pediatrics.
They identified 4,661 8-year-olds with ASD in the metro area. The majority did not have intellectual disabilities (59.3%) and were therefore less likely to be previously identified.
ASD is a developmental disorder that impacts an individual verbally, behaviorally and socially. Doctors make a diagnosis by looking at a child’s developmental history and behavior, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, since there is no exact medical test, determining ASD can be challenging. Some do not receive a diagnosis until they are adolescents or even adults.
But earlier, more accurate diagnoses don’t completely explain the upwards trend, which was based on estimates from the CDC.
Experts said that waiting too long to have kids could be partly responsible for the rise.
“Known environmental factors, such as parent age, are likely contributing. Many parents in the metro area wait to have children at older ages,” Josephine Shenouda, an adjunct professor at Rutgers and one of the lead authors of the study, told The Post.
“There are likely other yet-to-be known environmental [and] biological causes that require further investigations,” she added.
According to the CDC, the rate of women having their first child after 40 more than doubled between 1990 and 2012. In New York, the rate went up 57% between 2000 and 2012.
Meanwhile, data from the U.S. Census Bureau released last year found that the median age of new moms is now 30 — the highest on record.
Previous research suggests that moms over 40 have a 51% higher risk of having a child with autism than mothers ages 25 to 29, and a 77% higher risk than moms under age 25.
The Rutgers study also found that black children are likely under-diagnosed with autism — particularly if they don’t have intellectual disabilities. While the racial gap in autism diagnoses is diminishing — partially explaining the rise in autism cases overall — the actual numbers may be even higher in this demographic.
“Historically, children residing in less affluent areas, and black and Hispanic children, had lower rates of autism,” Shenouda said. “Today, we see [fewer] disparities in identification among those groups, but [they] still remain, and going forward will likely contribute to continued increases in autism as we address those disparities.”
Judy Woodruff on how her son with disabilities changed her view of health care
One subject close to her heart that she wants to highlight? People with disabilities.
Her oldest son, Jeffrey Hunt, was born with what she calls a “very mild” case of spina bifida. When he was a teenager, what was a supposed to be a routine operation left him in a wheelchair and in need of full-time care. It was life-altering for Jeffrey and the entire family.
Jeffrey, now 41, lives in a group home in Maryland, and says the love and support of his family got him to this point. “After I was injured my parents were with me every day,” he writes in an email. “They told me despite disabilities, I can succeed. I have succeeded thus far.”
It’s one thing to report on the kitchen table issues that affect people, another to live them. As a mother, Woodruff is keenly attuned to the needs of those with disabilities and their caregivers; as a Washington reporter, she has a deep understanding of what politicians and policymakers can do to help them.
“It made her dedicated to advancing the needs of people with these challenges in the medical system,” says longtime friend and colleague Andrea Mitchell, NBC News’s chief foreign affairs correspondent. “I think she’s more sensitive. She’s always been empathic, but this inevitably changed her.”
“I thought I was sensitive and compassionate before Jeff was injured,” says Woodruff. “But I found that there’s just a whole other level of what he was experiencing that affected me profoundly.” As a parent and caregiver, “you suddenly belong to this community that you never knew you were going to be part of, and none of us probably wanted to be there.”
Woodruff, 76, was a senior in high school when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. She became fascinated with politics and what it can do to change people’s lives, and spent two summers as a congressional intern in Washington. “I remember thinking: ‘This is the place where important things are happening. People are doing things that matter.’ And I just I just was captivated,” she says. She graduated from Duke with a degree in political science — the first in her extended family to attend college.
Not confident in her writing skills, she thought broadcast journalism might be a better fit. Her passion and ambition got her a job interview with an Atlanta station; her looks, she admits, got her a job as a weather girl.
She later reported on local politics and the state’s governor, Jimmy Carter, which landed her a job at NBC News in Washington, where she became one of the few women covering his presidential campaign. That’s where she met Wall Street Journal correspondent Al Hunt, who, he remembers, was smitten with the “the blonde with the great legs.” The two married in 1980 and have been a power couple in Washington for four decades.
Just before Jeffrey was born in 1981, she found out he had spina bifida, a medical condition caused when the spinal cord does not fully close during pregnancy; complications can include weakened leg muscles, incontinence and fluid on the brain.
The couple considered this a challenge but were determined to give Jeffrey a traditional childhood — and for the most part, they did. He was an active student, a swimmer and skier. They had another son and adopted a daughter. They hosted an annual roast of politicians and journalists in Washington to raise money for research and public awareness of spina bifida. Life was good.
In 1998, when Jeffrey was 16, his doctor recommended an operation to replace a shunt, which had been inserted when he was a baby to drain excess fluid on his brain. The night before, he was joking around with friends; the next day he was in a coma.
Woodruff and her husband raced their son to the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, where they spent the next four months. The doctor who saved Jeffrey’s life? Ben Carson, then a groundbreaking pediatric neurosurgeon — decades before he ran for president and served in the Trump administration. (In an email, Carson calls Woodruff “an extremely caring individual” and “one of the finest people in the world of news media that I have ever met.”)
Jeffrey was left unable to walk, with limited movement, vision and speech. As a mother, Woodruff went into survival mode. What she didn’t realize until much later was that she never grieved — for her son and for the life he might have lived.
“We were trying so hard to just keep everything on an even keel, make sure Jeffrey had access to good therapy, good teaching to bring him back to a semblance of where he had been before the injury,” she remembers. “We’re so focused on making everything as normal as possible that we didn’t really allow ourselves to grieve because he’s still there. He’s alive, right? He’s still Jeff, but he’s a changed Jeff. And there’s a mourning process that we didn’t go through.”
Woodruff says she was “devastated” by all of it. “I mean, that doesn’t even do justice. I remember I cried every day for two years after it happened.” She’s past that point but can still “just lose it all together” when she thinks about what might have been. “He’s a wonderful person. He’s an amazing human being. He’s so full of life and spirit. And he could have had a different life.”
All of this could have derailed her career; Woodruff, by then at CNN, was given all the time off she needed. But she was overwhelmed and considered quitting her job. How do you move forward when life breaks your heart?
She recalls confiding in one of Jeffrey’s doctors, who told her quitting wouldn’t heal her son. “He said: ‘What you need to do is go and be the best person you can, be the best mom you can be, support your family in a sense that you’re healthy mentally and physically. Jeffrey doesn’t need a mom who’s broken into pieces and miserable; he needs a mom who’s able to put one foot in front of the other.’”
As parents, she and Al were lucky to have the flexibility and financial resources to give Jeffrey whatever was required. As journalists, the experience gave them an intimate look at America’s health-care system.
“It makes you appreciative of how difficult and expensive a serious health issue is,” says Al. “It used to infuriate me when politicians would talk about how good the current health-care-delivery system was. They never went through the hell of not being about to afford the best care.”
He and Woodruff credit politicians such as Bob Dole, John McCain, Tom Harkin and Ted Kennedy, who fought for the Americans With Disabilities Act and other legislation that protects people with disabilities from discrimination and mandates public accommodations. Obamacare, he says, has also helped millions of families.
Jeffrey’s disability “hasn’t changed my view of politics per se — and I think Judy would say the same — but it’s provided a window in the inequities of American care,” Al says.
Their experience has also provided a better understanding of how health care and disabilities are reported in the media. “I’ve gotten to know journalists over the years who cover people with disabilities — and recognize, frankly, how little it’s covered,” Woodruff says. “There certainly are plenty of groups out there beating the drum for cancer and heart disease and covid. They’re all worthy. They’re all important.”
Covering disabilities is complicated by the fact that they occur for so many reasons — genetic conditions, illness, accidents, war injuries. “Because there are so many different organizations and people advocating, it’s been hard to come together and make one case,” she says. “It pits one good cause against another good cause.”
Woodruff says never felt health care should become her full-time beat, but she became more attuned to lack of funding for disabilities. “I was aware of it enough to say, ‘Okay, we should do this or we should do that interview, or we should pay attention to that debate over a vote.’”
She partnered with the Spina Bifida Association to raise visibility and funding for research and treatment; Jeffrey would often join her at conferences on the subject. After his operation, her outreach expanded to the broader community of the disabled and their caregivers.
There are also the smaller, personal acts. “Judy does so much quietly,” Mitchell says. She was visiting Woodruff’s home a few years back when a young mother arrived; her baby had spina bifida, and Woodruff had offered to spend some one-on-one time answering questions. “Judy and Al have transformed a family tragedy into a triumph of the human spirit.”
Jeffrey graduated from high school and college with the help of a series of full-time aides. He lives in a private group home at Target Community and Educational Services, a program affiliated with McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. He spends some weekends with his parents and attends church every Sunday.
As part of the college’s vocational program, he works part-time admitting students and faculty members to the McDaniel athletic center. He’s a huge fan of the school’s football team, as well as the Baltimore Ravens and Washington Wizards. He loves to ski — a sport he discovered when he was 4 years old — and goes to Vail, Colo., which has an adaptive ski program.
His other love? News — no surprise as the son of two journalists. He’s arguably his mom’s biggest fan: They talk every day; he follows current events carefully and constantly sends her questions she should ask.
“I watch her program every night and call her afterwards,” he writes. “After we discuss the program, she asks me if I know how much she loves me. She is serious at work, but at home she can be very funny. She makes me laugh a lot. She does great ‘Godfather’ imitations, like Tattaglia.”
“He’s doing remarkably well,” says Woodruff. Her son likes where he lives and has made a lot of friends — something she believes is harder for people with disabilities, who are often defined by their medical conditions. “People just treat you differently,” she says. “And that’s the part of it that really bothers me.”
She adds: “I’ve thought about this a lot. He could have been a very bitter person because of what happened. But he manages to have a remarkably positive outlook.”
Over the next two years, Woodruff says, she plans to do more segments on disability in America, with a special interest in the lack of resources for adults living with disabilities. It is an issue that cuts across politics, demographics and party lines; she hopes she can bring her personal experience to the stories and help restore some of the country’s broken trust in the media.
“We have to walk that fine line between having a heart and caring and being human, but also understanding that we have a job to do,” she says. “So I guess I’m asking the public to understand that. Most of us are trying to do the right thing. We’re trying to get the story right.”
Long COVID Contributing to Disabilities by the Millions
Interdisciplinary treatments aimed at both mind and body are needed for these complex conditions
From early 2021, stories have emerged of people experiencing post-COVID-19 symptoms that were so debilitating it impacted their ability to work and live a normal life.
Thirty-one-year-old Rebecca Meyer spoke on CNN in January 2021 about her 11-month struggle with long COVID symptoms for 11 months, having contracted symptoms from an infection.
Prior to infection, she was a healthy woman with no underlying health conditions. However, 11 months into the sickness, Meyer maintained that she was still “very much in the symptom-management phase of my sickness.”
Her bedroom looked like a pharmacy due to the many medications she had tried.
Speaking on her health, Meyer’s voice cracked with emotion; she needs a feeding tube due to gastroenteritis from her post-COVID symptoms, and is very much out of her four children’s lives. At the time, she reported that she has been reliant on her boyfriend, who lost his job due to the pandemic, to take care of her and the children.
“I was an active mom of four. And now I don’t get out of bed. I don’t eat, I don’t spend time with my children like I need to. This can happen to you,” she said.
Despite running over two years into the pandemic, there has been little progress on our understanding of long COVID symptoms and patients affected by it have remained largely neglected. Meanwhile, the debilitating conditions that many long COVID patients are suffering from have persisted, and are growing as a new group of disabled individuals.
Young and Disabled
While most clear out their COVID-19 symptoms in days to a few weeks, recent studies estimate that around 1 in 8 people who have been infected will have persistent COVID symptoms, despite testing negative for COVID-19.
Doctors still do not understand the drivers behind these symptoms, nor why these people are affected. Many long COVID patients, also known as long-haulers, are younger in demographic, and previously had no underlying health conditions.
However, many are hit with a myriad of mental and physiological conditions, including symptoms common to acute-COVID such as cough, fevers, shortness of breath, headaches, fatigue, and muscle aches, as well as less common COVID symptoms including brain fog, severe fatigue, chest pains, depression and anxiety, pins-and-needles, heart palpitations, sleep problems, along with other strange conditions.
Not all long COVID symptoms are debilitating, but for some, suffering from long COVID could mean a complete change to their lifestyle, and possibly even a disability.
The disabilities caused by long COVID-19 are directly related to critical organs including the brain, heart, lungs, and muscles.
1. Brain impairment: long COVID-19 impairs brain function and causes nerve damage. Studies have shown that more than 30 percent of SARS-CoV-2 viruses attack nerves. Nerves are a reservoir of hidden viruses, and nerves are connected to internal organs. Many “long-haulers” experience brain fog including difficulty sleeping, headaches, and dulled thinking and memory.
2. Impaired heart function: fatigue is a primary symptom in long haulers as well as muscle aches and increased fatigue after exercise. Many suffer from reduced cardiac output, meaning they have to reduce the intensity of their exercise and some cannot exercise without putting their health at risk.
3. Impaired respiratory function: studies have found that long COVID patients have decreased lung function due to scarring and inflammation. This can lead to decreased oxygen uptake and shortness of breath from lowered blood oxygen levels.
4. Impaired muscle function: persistent immune actions against viruses damage cells, including muscle cells and tissue. Inflammation from the immune responses can trigger inflammation in muscle fibers and induce muscle weakness.
5. Impaired blood vessel function: inflammation in the body damages cells that line blood vessels, and can possibly impair oxygen supply to organs and muscles. This can cause fatigue and aches.
A Global Problem
Disabilities from long COVID, and debilitating vaccine injuries (which often share similarities to long COVID symptoms) are growing, and becoming a problem of both national and global concern.
Debilitating long COVID symptoms can make it difficult for people to enjoy social activities and hold down a job.
News reports have emerged of people with long COVID and the vaccine injured who have faced discrimination from work and were later layovered due to their condition.
In July, 2021 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services listed long COVID as a disability under Titles II (state and local government) and III (public accommodations) of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The statement cited that individuals claiming for long COVID disability will be assessed individually by health experts to determine if their health problems are from long COVD.
Latest U.S. government figures revealed a staggering 385,000 people have been living with symptoms of long COVID for a year or more.
A study by Brookings estimated that around 4.5 million Americans with long COVID are out of work.
This not only impacts the American workforce but is also a significant global problem both in matters of labor and healthcare.
Studies from the Netherlands showed that COVID-19 and long COVID has driven up sick leave during the pandemic. During the pandemic, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development published policies, encouraging implementation of sick leave income for people suffering from COVID-19 symptoms to protect their income, health, and jobs during the COVID-19 crisis.
While this provided temporary relief to the people who needed paid leave as a safety net, it also invariably increased government spending, with most countries coming out of the pandemic seeing unprecedented inflation rates.
Health conditions as a result of COVID-19 and related problems are also contributing to a shortfall in labor. Given that the world is already burdened with labor shortage from two years of pandemic, and rapidly changing work environment and career outlooks, disabilities from long COVID and vaccine injuries only add fuel to the fire.
A study published before the pandemic showed that, by 2030, more than 85 million jobs could go unfilled because there aren’t enough skilled people to take them, this number is expected to be significantly higher coming out of the pandemic.
The World Health Organization has also reported that more than 6.4 million deaths from COVID-19 and related problems. News reports have shown that there are many more vaccine injured and those who have declined vaccinations who have lost their jobs.
The expectation for work has also shifted during the pandemic. After two years of mostly working remotely with unstable employment and income, people coming out of lockdowns are also reporting mental health problems. Some came to the conclusion that work is not as important as their health or mental wellbeing and have since postponed seeking employment.
Interdisciplinary Approach to Treat Both Mind and Body
Considering that long COVID-19 is an interdisciplinary disease with a myriad of conditions that affect multiple organs, holistic health approaches have been encouraged by clinicians to treat the symptoms as a whole.
Dr. Sandrock, a professor of critical care and infectious disease medicine at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, also said that the only universal treatment for “long-term symptoms of COVID-19” is to “improve the quality of life,” including adjusting sleep and reducing stress.
A few options of integrative care have emerged in scientific literature to resolve long COVID.
Psychological Therapies
Long COVID is detrimental to mental health. Patients often report symptoms that may be synonymous with depression and anxiety, including insomnia and muscle weakness.
Fatigue is a primary symptom of long COVID. For the patients in a state of social isolation, as well as financial and relationship difficulties, their situation can worsen fatigue, which can further cause negative impacts on mental health, and quality of life, forming a negative spiral.
People with long COVID are encouraged to seek out counseling and interact with support groups for people sharing similar conditions.
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a holistic and energy-based medicinal practice based on the understanding that the body and its organs correspond to different energies.
Energy in excess or deficiency can affect particular organs, causing imbalances to the body. Therefore, by inserting very thin needles into acupoints at different meridians, energy balances can be restored at different organs.
Acupuncture has long been acknowledged as a medical practice that can alleviate symptoms of chronic pain.
Studies have shown that acupuncture increases the release of neurotransmitters including serotonin and noradrenaline. It also promotes the release of endorphins and melatonin and improves immune function.
The practice reasons that mental illnesses are due to imbalances in energies in various organs,
Studies have shown that acupuncture can improve mental conditions including depression and anxiety. Research indicates that depressive symptoms may be alleviated through the release of serotonin and noradrenaline, and electroencephalography readings show electroacupuncture (a form of acupuncture) may be just as effective as amitriptyline without the drug side effects.
In people with anxiety, acupuncture enhances a sense of stillness, general restfulness, and unresponsiveness to painful stimuli. It also boosts the release of endorphin, a hormone related to the feeling of happiness and satisfaction, as well as melatonin, a hormone that modulates the circadian rhythm and improves sleep.
Electroencephalography readings showed that acupuncture increased alpha waves, a wave associated with a normal wakeful state where the subject is quietly resting.
Studies have shown that acupuncture reduces patients’ needs for preoperative sedatives and the use of acupuncture comes with reduced side effects in comparison to prescription drugs for pain.
For long COVID symptoms, acupuncture is suggested to stimulate the central nervous system. Specifically it reduces the “fight or flight” stress response of the sympathetic nervous system while stimulating the parasympathetic responses (“rest and digest”).
Studies on long COVID patients suffering from chest palpitation and shortness of breath—symptoms synonymous with anxiety—found that patients experienced a decrease in the severity of the symptoms following acupuncture sessions.
Rehabilitation Interventions
Rehabilitations including physical, occupational, and speech therapy to help patients return to daily life.
Studies on aerobic and pulmonary physiotherapy, found that it improves patients’ shortness of breath, anxiety, and fear of moving. High and low-intensity aerobic exercises increased appendicular muscle mass as well as handgrip strength in patients with long COVID.
Rehabilitation and nutrition programs can also prevent and improve loss of muscle mass in patients.
Chiropractic Therapy
Chiropractic therapy is a holistic therapy that focuses on the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine. Chiropractors believe that vertebrae can become misaligned or move out of their normal position, creating subluxations that put pressure on the tissues around them.
This pressure can affect not only the immediate joints but also other visceral organs and the whole body. Therefore, chiropractors believe symptoms of stiffness, dizziness, lack of energy, general malaise, posture imbalance, neck and back stiffness or soreness, spine muscle spasms, constant headaches, and lessening of mobility are all signs of subluxation.
Vertebrae can be realigned through skeletal manipulation, which is when chiropractors apply a force to the area that is misaligned, and chiropractors use various techniques to manipulate relevant joints.
Primarily, chiropractic therapy has been used to treat back pain, however several studies have indicated that they can also treat pain in joints and limbs, muscle pain and tenderness, insomnia, headaches, and fatigue.
Meditation
Meditation, a mental exercise to attain greater spiritual awareness, is an umbrella term for various practices including yoga, taichi, breathing, and mindfulness exercises, and many more.
Meditation has been associated with many mental and physiological health benefits.
Studies have shown that meditation improves symptoms of depression, anxiety, as well as concentration, and focus.
Physically, meditation has been shown to reduce inflammation and strengthen the immune system. Studies in immune-compromised (HIV and cancer) patients showed that meditation increased or reduced the decline of immune cells, and also prevented immune aging.
Mindful meditation have been suggested to regulate and restore immune signaling. Studies showed that meditation improved interferon messaging. Interferons are dysregulated in people with severe COVID symptoms and have been suggested to also drive vaccine injury. Restoring a robust interferon pathway may improve the symptoms in people suffering from long COVID and in people sharing similar symptoms.
Meditation and mindful exercises have been encouraged during the pandemic and for long COVID patients to recover from fatigue and mental distress.
Even minimal meditation improves mental health, studies have shown novice meditators who listened to a 10 minute meditation tape before attention tests received a higher score than people who did not meditate beforehand.
Some meditation guides recommend beginners start with two to five minutes of meditation whenever they want to regulate stress and emotions. However, given that meditation could mean various practices, everyone can experiment with the duration and frequency to see what works best for them.
A federal judge ruled Texas’ school mask ban violates the Americans with Disabilities Act
According to the court documents filed Wednesday, Texas independent school districts could choose whether to implement mask mandates for in-person instruction during the 2020-2021 school year. But before the new school year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an order which, among other things, prohibited public schools from requiring students, staff and visitors to wear masks in their facilities.
“Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices, which is why masks will not be mandated by public school districts or government entities,” Abbott had said in May. “We can continue to mitigate COVID-19 while defending Texans’ liberty to choose whether or not they mask up.”
Disability Rights Texas, an advocacy group, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of several Texas families against the governor, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath, claiming the spread of the virus was posing “an even greater risk for children with special health needs.”
“Children with certain underlying conditions who contract COVID-19 are more likely to experience severe acute biological effects and to require admission to a hospital and the hospital’s intensive-care unit,” the lawsuit said. “This includes children with conditions including, Down syndrome, organ transplants, lung conditions, heart conditions, and weakened immune systems.”
The ruling signed by US District Court Judge Lee Yeakel says that “at issue is whether Governor Greg Abbott’s Executive Order GA-38 violates Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.”
“The evidence presented by Plaintiffs establishes that Plaintiffs are being denied the benefits of in-person learning on an equal basis as their peers without disabilities. The court concludes that GA-38 violates the ADA,” the ruling said.
Following the judge’s decision, the Texas attorney general wrote on Twitter, “I strongly disagree with Judge Yeakel’s opinion barring my office from giving effect to GA-38, which prohibits mask mandates imposed by government entities like school districts.”
“My agency is considering all legal avenues to challenge this decision,” the attorney general wrote.
The ruling also follows a September announcement from the US Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm that it was opening an investigation to determine whether the state’s school mask mandate ban was preventing school districts from “considering or meeting the needs of students with disabilities.”
At the time, the department said in a letter to Morath it was “concerned that Texas’s restriction on schools and school districts from putting masking requirements in place may be preventing schools in Texas from meeting their legal obligations not to discriminate based on disability and from providing an equal educational opportunity to students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from COVID-19.”
Nagaenthran Dharmalingam: Campaigners urge Singapore not to execute man with intellectual disabilities
Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, a 33-year-old Malaysian man, was arrested in 2009 for bringing 42.7 grams (1.5 ounces) of heroin into Singapore. He was due to be executed by hanging on Wednesday.
On Monday, the High Court ordered a stay of execution “pending the hearing of the appeal to the Court of Appeal against the decision of the High Court,” his lawyer in Singapore M. Ravi posted on Facebook. Lawyers had sought a prohibitory order against the execution, having exhausted all other legal appeals. A petition to the President for clemency was also unsuccessful.
It is as yet unclear what the next steps are.
Dharmalingam’s lawyers and rights groups fighting to save him say Singapore is violating international law by executing a person with a mental impairment.
Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement Dharmalingam “was accorded full due process under the law, and was represented by legal counsel throughout the process.”
However, his lawyers argue that Dharmalingam should not have been sentenced to death under Singaporean law because he was incapable of understanding his actions. A psychologist assessed his IQ to be 69, which is internationally recognized as an intellectual disability. At his trial, the defense also argued he had severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline intellectual functioning, and severe alcohol use disorder.
Dharmalingam has spent a decade on death row and during that time his condition has further deteriorated, his lawyers said.
“He has not a very good sense of what is happening around him,” said N. Surendran, a Malaysian lawyer who is representing Dharmalingam’s family, and adviser to Malaysian NGO Lawyers for Liberty. “He is disoriented. He’s got no real clue of what is going to happen to him.”
Surendran said executing Dharmalingam “would be tantamount to executing a child.”
Singapore has some of the strictest drug laws in the world. Trafficking a certain amount of drugs — for example, 15 grams (0.5 ounces) of heroin — results in a mandatory death sentence under the Misuse of Drugs Act. It was only recently — and after Dharmalingam’s case began — the law was amended to allow for a convicted person to escape the death penalty in certain circumstances.
Dharmalingam was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death by Singapore’s High Court in 2010. His first appeal was dismissed a year later. Another appeal after Singapore amended its drug law was again rejected in 2018.
“The Court of Appeal affirmed the High Court’s decision and said that it was satisfied that Nagaenthran clearly understood the nature of his acts,” the Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement.
The court argued Dharmalingam transported drugs “in order to pay off his debts” and he knew it was unlawful so he “attempted to conceal the bundle by strapping it to his left thigh.” It also said Dharmalingam was “continuously altering his account of his education qualifications, ostensibly to reflect lower educational qualifications each time he was interviewed.”
“This was ‘the working of a criminal mind, weighing the risks and countervailing benefits associated with the criminal conduct in question.’ Nagaenthran considered the risks, balanced it against the reward he had hoped he would get, and decided to take the risk,” the ministry said in its statement, quoting the court’s decision.
Public pressure
Dharmalingam’s case has sparked international condemnation. Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob has written to his Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsein Loong asking for leniency, Malaysian state media Bernama reported.
More than 62,000 people have signed a petition urging Singapore’s President Halimah Yacob to issue a pardon. Last week, dozens of activists protested outside Parliament in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) and other rights groups have also called on the Singapore government to halt the execution.
“Executing a man with a disability, who was convicted after an investigation and trial that provided no disability-specific accommodations, violates international law and won’t deter crime,” Emina Ćerimović, senior disability rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
“Singapore should commute Nagaenthran Dharmalingam’s sentence and amend its laws to ensure that no one is subjected to the death penalty, certainly not people with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities.”
Surendran, the lawyer, said the execution order was “sickening beyond belief.”
“We will work until the very last minute to save Nagaenthran but of course, as you can see time is running short,” he said.
Family ‘shocked’
Dharmalingam’s family, who live in Ipoh, northwestern Malaysia, were notified of his impending execution only on October 26. His lawyer in Singapore, M. Ravi posted the letter to Facebook, calling the order “state sanctioned murder.”
The letter stipulated only five members of Dharmalingam’s family would be allowed to enter Singapore and would need to contend with a list of Covid regulations.
Several family members who managed to get to Singapore and meet with Dharmalingam in Changi prison are “shocked” at his condition, Surendran said.
“They see a completely different person, they’re not able to get through to him,” he said.
It was also a “tremendous challenge” for them to travel to Singapore from Malaysia due to the various financial costs and Covid restrictions imposed, he said. “It has been very difficult for the family.”
If the execution goes ahead, Singapore would be in breach “not only of customary international law, but also their own obligations under the UN convention on the rights of disabled person, which they have signed and ratified,” Surendran said.
Why Can’t Astronauts Have Disabilities? 12 Fliers Search for Proof They Can.
Eric Ingram typically moves through the world on his wheelchair. The 31-year-old chief executive of SCOUT Inc., a smart satellite components company, was born with Freeman-Sheldon Syndrome, a rare condition that affects his joints and blocked him from his dream of becoming an astronaut. He applied and was rejected, twice.
But onboard a special airplane flight this week, he spun effortlessly through the air, touching nothing. Moving around, he found, was easier in the simulated zero-gravity environment where he needed so few tools to help.
While simulating lunar gravity on the flight — which is about one-sixth of Earth’s — he discovered something even more surprising: for the first time in his life, he could stand up.
“It was legitimately weird,” he said. “Just the act of standing was probably almost as alien to me as floating in zero gravity.”
He was one of 12 disabled passengers who swam through the air aboard a parabolic flight in Southern California last Sunday in an experiment testing how people with disabilities fare in a zero-gravity environment. Parabolic flights, which fly within Earth’s atmosphere in alternating arcs, allow passengers to experience zero gravity on the upward arcs for repeated short bursts, and are a regular part of training for astronauts.
The flight was organized by AstroAccess, a nonprofit initiative that aims to make spaceflight accessible to to all. Although about 600 people have been to space since the beginning of human spaceflight in the 1960s, NASA and other space agencies have long restricted the job of astronaut to a minuscule slice of humanity. The American agency initially only selected white, physically fit men to be astronauts and even when the agency broadened its criteria, it still only chose people that met certain physical requirements.
This blocked the path to space for many with disabilities, overlooking arguments that disabled people could make excellent astronauts in some cases.
But the rise of private spaceflight, funded by billionaires with the support of government space agencies, is creating the possibility of allowing a much wider and more diverse pool of people to make trips to the edge of space and beyond. And those with disabilities are aiming to be included.
The participants in Sunday’s AstroAccess flight argue that accessibility issues must be considered now — at the advent of private space travel — rather than later, because retrofitting equipment to be accessible would take more time and money.
The Federal Aviation Administration is prohibited from creating safety regulations for private spaceflights until October 2023. Initiatives like AstroAccess are aiming to guide the way that government agencies think about accessibility on spaceflights.
“It’s crucial that we’re able to get out ahead of that regulatory process and prevent misinformation or lack of information or lack of data from making bad regulation that would prevent someone with disability flying on one of these trips,” Mr. Ingram said.
The group also hopes that making everything accessible from the get-go could lead to new space innovations that are helpful for everyone, regardless of disability.
For example, Sawyer Rosenstein, another AstroAccess passenger, is quick to point out how the lightweight metal alloys used in his wheelchair are a byproduct of NASA innovations. Mr. Rosenstein, 27, has been paralyzed from the waist down since an injury in middle school.
Barred from space itself, Mr. Rosenstein became a journalist who often reports on space, including for a podcast, Talking Space.
During Sunday’s flight. Mr. Rosenstein wore a specially modified flight suit with a strap he could grab to bend his knees and maneuver his legs.
“I was in control of myself and my whole body,” Mr. Rosenstein said. “It’s almost indescribable to have that freedom after having it taken away for so long.”
He also found he was more flexible in zero gravity, where he could finally test his full range of motion. And the chronic pain he usually experiences throughout his body disappeared during the flight, he said. Like Mr. Ingram, he also could stand up on his own. They both suggested that their experiences signal that zero gravity or reduced gravity could have potential therapeutic applications.
With just a few modifications for each type of disability, Ann Kapusta, AstroAccess’s mission and communications director, said the dozen participants in the flight had a roughly 90 percent success rate getting back to their seats after 15 tests — 12 in zero gravity, two that mimicked lunar gravity and one that mimicked Martian gravity.
AstroAccess conducted these tests — each lasting 20 to 30 seconds — to ensure that people with disabilities can go on a suborbital flight, like the one Jeff Bezos took in October, and safely get into their seats in the limited time before re-entry. This is typical training for suborbital flights, but not for orbital flights, which don’t have the same time crunch before re-entry.
The relative ease of the flight surprised some on the team, including Tim Bailey, the executive director of Yuri’s Night, a nonprofit organization focused on space education that sponsors AstroAccess. At first, he said he was concerned that people with disabilities were more fragile and would require extra medical precautions.
“My biggest takeaway from this is my initial reaction of, ‘Oh my goodness, this is going to be hard,’ was wrong,” he said. “They didn’t need a lot of extra stuff.”
But moving around the plane was not without some challenges, said Centra Mazyck, 45, who was injured and became partially paralyzed while serving as a member of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.
“It’s very hard because it’s like you’re floating, you’re light as a feather,” she said. “You don’t know your strengths or your weaknesses.”
Sunday’s parabolic flight was reminiscent of one in 2007 with Stephen Hawking, the physicist, who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S. But unlike Dr. Hawking’s flight, this one was geared toward researching the ability of disabled people to function independently in space and developing tools they could use to do so.
In addition to modified spacesuits for mobility impaired passengers, researchers tested special lighting systems for deaf passengers and Braille and navigational devices for blind passengers.
To navigate the plane as a blind person, Mona Minkara, 33, tested an ultrasonic device and a haptic, or vibrating, device, both of which signaled her as she approached the plane’s walls and other objects. But the most helpful device, she said, was the simplest: an extendable cane.
“What was surprising to me is at some points, I knew exactly where I was and how I was facing,” she said.
Dr. Minkara, a bioengineer at Northeastern University in Boston, pointed out that making spacecraft navigable for blind people would also help keep other astronauts safe if the lights go out during a spacecraft emergency.
Some on Sunday’s flight once dreamed of becoming professional astronauts, and hope this research could open the door for other disabled people to get the job.
The European Space Agency announced this year that it is accepting astronaut applications from those with leg amputations or who are especially short, and hopes to expand to include more types of disabilities in the future. Courtney Beasley, a spokeswoman for NASA, said the American agency is not currently considering changing its selection criteria.
Some private space companies’ rules are more forgiving than those of government agencies. Although SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment, Hayley Arceneaux became the first person with a prosthetic to travel to orbit in September during the Inspiration4 flight aboard the company’s Crew Dragon capsule.
Axiom Space, which is booking flights on SpaceX’s vehicle to the International Space Station, and Virgin Galactic, which flies a suborbital space plane, do not have a list of disqualifying conditions for astronauts, and say they consider accommodations on a case-by-case basis.
Dr. Tarah Castleberry, the chief medical officer of Virgin Galactic, said the company will conduct medical screenings for each astronaut to ensure safety and is currently considering flying people who have prosthetics, hearing impairments, paralysis and other medical conditions and physical disabilities.
Blue Origin, the company owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, said in a statement that passengers must meet its own list of functional requirements that may exclude blind, deaf or mobility-impaired individuals from flying.
Apurva Varia, 48, is deaf and one of the people who would continue to be excluded by such rules.
“Space organizations told us that we can’t go to space, but why? Show me proof,” he said.
In ninth grade, Mr. Varia recalls watching a space shuttle launch on TV. The channel didn’t have closed captions, so Mr. Varia didn’t understand what the shuttle was, or why people were sitting inside wearing orange suits. When the countdown hit zero, he said he was amazed to see it blast into the sky and disappear.
Soon afterward, Mr. Varia wrote a letter to NASA asking if he could apply to be an astronaut. He got a reply saying that NASA couldn’t accept deaf astronauts at the time.
Mr. Varia went on to earn advanced engineering degrees and has worked for NASA for two decades to direct space missions and help design propulsion systems for satellites.
On Sunday’s flight, he got a little closer to his dream. He found himself bumping into the walls and ceilings as he tried to sign in American Sign Language and attempted drinking a big, floating bubble of water, which splashed on his face.
“It was an out-of-this-world experience,” he said. “I hope to go to space someday.”
230,000 debtors with disabilities see relief in ‘a tiny step’ that foreshadows others
The Education Department’s (ED) announced plans to cancel about $1.3 billion in student loan debt for 41,000 borrowers who had previously qualified for discharge but failed to receive it because of incomplete paperwork and waive certain procedures for another 190,000 borrowers.
“Borrowers with total and permanent disabilities should focus on their well-being, not put their health on the line to submit earnings information during the COVID-19 emergency,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “Waiving these requirements will ensure no borrower who is totally and permanently disabled risks having to repay their loans simply because they could not submit paperwork.”
Some borrowers will now see their cancellations come in effect without them having to submit additional earnings documentation during the pandemic. Iff they had made any payments between March 2020 and now, they would also be refunded that money. And about 190,000 borrowers who are in the three-year monitoring period wouldn’t have to submit earnings documents going forward, waiving that requirement, to qualify for a discharge.
Some experts in the space noted that the policy was misguided in the first place.
“This is really a tiny step and one that honestly shouldn’t have even been necessary,” Persis Yu at the National Consumer Law Center told Yahoo Finance. “It’s pretty outrageous that the department allowed these loans to be reinstated during the pandemic in the first place. … so while it’s important that they’re doing this action, it’s not so much a cause for celebration.”
For a borrower to qualify for a total and permanent disability discharge under current law, they’d have to submit an application form and then provide documentation of their earnings for three years for consideration. If they miss out on paperwork during this three-year monitoring period, their debts would be re-instated.
According to one report, around 400,000 borrowers across the country in 2019 technically qualified for a total and permanent disability discharge because. But since the process is opt-in and they would need to apply to ED to get cancellation, Yu noted, they’ve missed out.
“We are talking about by definition, about a population that has disabilities, and some of those disabilities are cognitive, like … traumatic brain injuries,” Bethany Lilly, co-author of the report and senior director of income policy at The Arc, told Yahoo Finance. “There’s a chunk of this population that isn’t going to be very good at paperwork.”
Former President Donald Trump signed an executive order in 2019 that called on ED to notify more than 25,000 veterans who qualify for total and permanent disability discharge of their eligibility for cancellation. Importantly, Yu noted, the order also automated the process and removed the three-year wait for those borrowers.
ED said it was aware of these two critical fixes and was looking to expand relief policies.
“Those are things that are under consideration but they cannot be done right away,… [they] take some time,” an official explained. “We are continuing at what else we can do here … [but] total and permanent disability, much like a lot of our programs, is not working as efficiently as it should, and we’re continuing to see what we can do to.”
Yu stressed that relief policies that leave out so many relevant borrowers is an indication of “the failure of targeted relief. Whenever you create unnecessary bureaucracy around getting relief to borrowers, borrowers who need that relief will fail to get it. … this is why we need widespread student debt cancellation.”
House Education and Labor Committee Chair Bobby Scott (D-VA), who supports recent moves by ED to help student loan borrowers, stated that the announcement “is yet another example of how the Biden Administration is using its authority to improve the lives of student loan borrowers and their families.” Scott added that he hoped the momentum will continue, and ED “will continue providing expedited loan relief to eligible borrowers who were largely ignored by the previous Administration.”
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Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.
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Watchdog: UK patients with learning disabilities given do not resuscitate orders if they had COVID-19
A watchdog group has said that patients in the United Kingdom with learning disabilities who contracted the coronavirus were given unnecessary “do not resuscitate” orders.
Mencap, a watchdog group aimed at helping those with learning disabilities, has said they received multiple reports from coronavirus patients with learning disabilities who were told they would not be resuscitated if their health deteriorated, according to a report from The Guardian.
“Throughout the pandemic many people with a learning disability have faced shocking discrimination and obstacles to accessing healthcare, with inappropriate Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) notices put on their files and cuts made to their social care support,” Edel Harris, Mencap’s chief executive, told The Guardian.
The do not resuscitate orders might have cost lives during the pandemic last year, according to The Care Quality Commission, a health care regulator in the U.K., said.
According to the news source it is not immediately clear why these orders were placed on people with learning disabilities. Do not resuscitate orders are usually administered to people who cannot withstand CPR.
New evidence also suggests that people with learning disabilities are more likely to have severe negative health consequences from the virus, according to The Guardian.
The UK is under lockdown again as the country continues to combat the new, more infectious, UK variant of the coronavirus virus.
In the first five weeks of their most current lockdown, the National Health Service, the UK’s publicly funded healthcare system, has found that 65 percent of COVID-19 deaths have been linked to those with disabilities, the Guardian reported.
And despite evidence of disproportionate effects, there has been debate in the country over whether those with learning disabilities should be a priority to receive vaccinations.
“It’s unacceptable that within a group of people hit so hard by the pandemic, and who even before Covid died on average over 20 years younger than the general population, many are left feeling scared and wondering why they have been left out,” Harris said.
The Hill has reached out to Mencap for comment.