Here's a bit of contrarian sporting news that escaped my attention when it happened April 18:  The 20 fastest finishers in the men's 2011 Boston Marathon had one thing in common: All raced in wheelchairs. Our friend Warren Reed highlights this remarkable (but largely unremarked upon) fact in an article for the Journal of Medical Ethics decrying the use of outdated terms about disabilities in scholarly writing by medical researchers. It's a point Reed has gently chided Contrarian about in the past. In an informal search of half a dozen medical journals, Reed found 8,680 articles in which the word "wheelchair" was...

11 August, 2011

Civil Rights activist Warren Reed took the time to read the complex documents setting forth the Dexter Government's furtive plan to slash medical benefits for residents of special care homes. The documents were posted here last night. The Dexter Government shelved the plan, which would have required residents making less than $2,000 per year to pay for needed medical supplies, dental treatments, vision care, and certain drugs including, in some cases, insulin and anti-seizure medication. The unannounced cuts, developed without consultation, were to have been implemented Canada Day, but were put on hold late Thursday after the Canadian Press wire...

01 July, 2011

Haligonian Warren Reed objects to the thoughtlessly patronizing word choices many journalists apply to wheelchair-users and those who discriminate them. In an email to two Chronicle-Herald reporters who recently wrote about separate cases of discrimination by Metro Transit and the Nova Scotia Justice Department against wheelchair users, he complained about three sentences in their stories: "The driver even called his supervisor, who confirmed that wheelchair-bound passengers are not allowed on [Bus No.] 60." "However, Sunday morning the driver said that he could get in a lot of trouble for letting wheelchair-bound passengers onto non-wheelchair routes." "Amy Paradis, 16, is quadriplegic and...

25 October, 2010
Contrarian would not have thought it possible for a defense of quackery to set me chuckling and nodding my head, but my old pal Warren Reed has done it. [Previous installments here and here.] Knowing that the best defense is a good offense, Reed began by catching me in the act of scientific error:
[caption id="attachment_4217" align="alignright" width="230" caption="Amedeo Avogadro"]avogad[/caption] One of the few things I remember from Nat. Sci. 3 is Avogadro's Number — 6.023 x 10**23.  So it isn't roughly 10**23 as you state — it's actually 6 times that.  Six is called The Republican Constant - any Republican can stretch the truth by a factor of six without raising an eyebrow on Fox News.  Journalists often get the same exemption. But we don't read Contrarian just for the science.  More puzzling is the notion that a group of pub-crawling Brits is claiming to know what constitutes "proper medical assistance."  Of the reasons for healing—the passage of time, the placebo effect, natural defenses—"proper medical assistance" is on the list, but is an evanescent concept at best.  It depends on many of the same principles for success as Homeopathy.  Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
More after the jump.
22 January, 2010

Haligonian Warren Reed has a sobering take on our discussion about potential "cures" for people with Down syndrome: I am still stuck on the Down Syndrome thread.  As Canadians with disabilities will tell you, Canada has a medical model of disability. The approach is, "let's fix what's wrong with you," rather than, "let's fix what's wrong with us." Hence the inaccessible buses, devilish sidewalks, and antediluvian building codes. The result is a hidden and large group of people who are disenfranchised, undervalued, ignored, and sometimes abused.  See the shocking account in Monday's Chronicle-Herald. One of my big defeats was an unsuccessful complaint...

11 December, 2009