Tag Archives: Cognitive Disability
Legal immunity for conservators
DisAbility Rights Galaxy has a great post on a rather scary case pending before the Connecticut Supreme Court addressing whether court-appointed conservators for people with disabilities should be immune from lawsuits. Conservators wield incredible power over their wards and it’s … Continue reading
Why do we recognize human rights?
There’s an interesting post and discussion on What Sorts of People Should There Be? on he philosophical basis for according rights to severely cognitively disabled humans while denying them to intelligent animals such as dolphins and apes. Joseph Singer has … Continue reading
Filed under Animal Rights, Disabilities
New Milgram research
Dominic J. Packer, of Ohio State University, performed a statistical meta-analysis on several of the original Milgram experiments, in which experimental participants were asked to administer progressively severe electric shocks to another individual (the other person was in reality an actor who was not in fact receiving shocks). . . . Overall these two studies emphasize the vulnerability of people whose choices, even choices to avoid pain, are disregarded or seen as not really their own. Although the choices of even perceived “competent” choice-makers are often disregarded in the face of authoritarian pressure, it is respect for those people’s choices that seems most important in causing people to resist those pressures. Take away that respect, and hope of humane treatment could grow incresingly dim. Continue reading
