Turning a disability into a gift - What do you think about employing blind people to help detect breast cancer?

Sounds amazing. If it works, then they should use it as much as possible.

That is just creepy!

I understand the value and importance of it.

Does it also work to detect testicle cancer?

If the data pans out scientifically it sounds good to me. I would have no problem going to an MTU for a breast exam yearly.

It’s not creepy at all.

That’s amazing.

If it works it works! Why fight it?

My girlfriend can always find my missing socks. It’s a gift!

That’s awesome. In Iceland a company hires people suffering from autism to do data entry. It provides a meaningful job and highly accurate data to the employer. This is even better.

Dang, it means a lot of dogs will soon be out of a job.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/pawprintpost/post/2009/10/dogs-cats-help-breast-cancer-fight/1

I think that’s very interesting and a great way to offer meaningful careers to people who are typically underemployed. I would also think that the patient might be somewhat less self-conscious than they would be with a sighted person examining them. I hope they bring that program to other countries.

[Mod Says:] Keep on topic folks and keep it civil. Do not use racial terminology. Any racist terminology or off- topic / personal quips will be removed.

So the question was basically, “What do you think?”

@pdworkin gave his opinion and got shut down. Because someone did not like it?

Wow, I guess in the future the “right” answer needs to be posted with the question so that will not happen again.

Here’s what I said, with an appropriate and necessary edit:

That’s what you call a meaningful “career”? This discussion to me is “Blind person as (insert discriminated against minority here)” without the hostility reserved for those of a different race. Instead it is supplanted by an equally vile infantilizing component which serves just as well to impute to the blind an inability to do work as productive or more productive as the work you do. What an unholy crock of shit.

@ChazMaz I gave the mods no option. They were being completely fair.

That’s cool.

But, what do you mean by, “discriminated against minority?”

:-)

@pdworkin I don’t think the purpose of this program is to patronize the blind. It can be viewed as giving a meaningful opportunity for someone unable to find it otherwise (and I see that you don’t like it when the blind are being treated as such, which I understand), or it can be viewed as taking advantage of a skill that is especially pronounced in the blind. I think that in this case the arrangement is a win-win. The patient gets a very accurate, more anonymous inspection and the blind individual uses their skill to possibly save a life. It’s not supposed to be a thinly veiled handout.

I worked in a neighborhood in Paris full of piano dealers. When I got off work in the evening, there were often several blind people walking along to the Metro, as I was. They were piano tuners, hired for the acuity of their hearing.

A huge portion of the human brain is devoted to the processing of visual information. Blindness frees that processing power for repurposing to other information-rich tasks.

@pdworkin It’s not like they are being forced to do it? And, I would guess even people who can see would be eligible if they were just as good at finding the cancers. It’s not different than saying you have to be able to carry 70 lbs to do this job, that leaves a lot of women out.

I’m sorry, but this is the soft bigotry of low expectations. The word I originally used which forced the mods to remove my post was the N word.

I happen to know a lot of blind people. One is a neuroscientist; one is a geneticist; one is an attorney-at-law; one owns a music studio; my girlfriend has an advanced degree and was just hired to direct an agency which treats drug-adddicted ex-felons. These are just a few examples.

In our culture we are not used to the idea that the blind are capable of such achievement. These people are not unusual, but every one of them has been treated like an imbecile, or a helpless person, or someone who needs to be called “dear” or “sweetheart”, and the fact that they have these (quite ordinary) careers is mistakenly seen by the most well-meaning of people as being “special” in some way, or requiring a peculiar form of courage. It does not. What requires courage is getting up every day to face a world that can’t imagine you as competent, and that expects you to make brooms, or string beads, or sell pencils from a tin cup, or tune pianos, or squeeze someone else’s tits.

Might there not be a soft elitism in devaluing skilled manual trades? Personally, if I thought I’d be any good at tuning pianos or at finding breast cancers with my fingers, I’d seriously consider swapping my current job for either.

@pdworkin I don’t think people are saying a blind person can’t be a scientist.

You live in a differently contexted world, @Harp. I am not discussing the quality of the work. I am discussing the differential way in which we treat blind people in this culture. Try responding to the larger point, instead of to the more limited point of whether or not tit-squeezing is a useful and/or honorable position. I’m sure it is. It is certainly more ameliorative than trading pork bellies. If you were limited to tuning pianos for no very good reason, you would feel differently about the opportunity. Being a porter on a train was pretty good work in the 1930s, but how many of those porters could have been architects or surgeons? We will never know.

You can’t call it “tit-squeezing” and lump it with bead-stringing and broom-making and then claim that the quality of the occupation is beside the point. If it had been found that blind people may have unique abilities in anesthesiology, would you feel this is an example of bigotry?

I’m done, @Harp. You know what I meant, and I have no interest in making this into an argument about the quality of my respect for the cancer-feeling job.

Here’s my opinion. Yes, meaningful careers are one aspect of it. But I think this goes far beyond. In essence, to me it’s really about the value and respect of human life in all its wonderful diversity. Should we work toward having societies of perfect humans? No flaws. No handicaps. No deficiencies. Just perfect designer babies. Piano players with 12 fingers. Implementing the Gattaca dream?

My answer is no. Human societies are strong not because every individual is perfect, but because the imperfection in one area allows people to focus on another area. Struggling with challenges can make people stronger. Handling a crisis helps people to grow. Setbacks lead to new opportunities.

Our mental attitude should not be, oh, this poor blind person can’t see the beauty of ocean, oh, this poor diabetic has to take insulin shots, oh, this poor old person can’t work 70-hour weeks anymore, oh, this poor clumsy girl isn’t very popular at school. Instead, our mental attitude should be, wow, this wonderful blind person is so good at playing the piano, wow, this diabetic knows so much about healthy food, wow, this old person is so composed and focused when the organization deals with yet another restructuring, wow, everyone should admire this clumsy girl whose voice can melt hearts when she sings solo for her school choir.

People need respect and appreciation instead of pity. I really hope this new MTU program succeeds.

@harp I think I can see where @pdworkin is coming from here, and why he lumps “tit-squeezing” in with “bead-stringing”, etc. Back in the dark ages before Arpanet, blind people were pretty much funneled into sheltered or set-aside jobs outside the mainstream of society—bead stringing, chair caning and, dare I say, piano tuning (I’d be willing to speculate that blind people are inordinately represented in piano tuning more because they’re encouraged in that direction and discouraged in occupations outside those which are assumed to require “keener hearing than the sighted” or “keener touch than the sighted”). I don’t think the issue from @pdworkin’s standpoint was the quality of the work. I’m guessing the issue is that you could replace “tit-squeezing” with “bead stringing” or “piano tuning” or “chair caning”, and you have yet another template about how the blind just can’t make it in a sighted world, and isn’t it bloody astounding how they’ve turned their handicap into an opportunity!. Admittedly, as a blind software engineer that’s juuuuust a little tired of being thought of as an inspiration for being able to get out of the house in the morning, I rather thought the article laid the disability angle on a little thick.