Thirty-two years later, in an online screenwriting class I was taking through UCLA’s film, theatre and TV department, I wrote a script in which the protagonist’s young son was killed. I was one of eight students in the class. Every other student complained that I shouldn’t have “killed” the young son. So, to please my tiny captive audience, I changed the script so the boy had to have a below-the-knee amputation. About six months later, a vascular surgeon amputated my left leg below the knee (with my permission) when gangrene took over a pressure sore infection.
In both of these stories, did my own inner thoughts and outward expression cause the negative outcomes? In a sense, did I get what I had wished for?
While it’s tempting to say yes, the answer is either no, or a qualified no. More likely than not, assigning cause in these instances was a result of an all-too-common logical fallacy — ad hoc, ergo propter hoc — “After this, therefore because of this.” But B is not caused by A simply because it follows it.
Those of us who have major disabilities, whether genetic or acquired, too often get trapped by this kind of thinking. We search for a cause in our own actions or lack of action. Indeed, whole civilizations have adopted the fallacy as a way of assigning blame to those who have a major disability. The major world religions have inculcated this kind of thinking into their belief systems for thousands of years — as either the law of karma or the belief that the sins of the fathers pass on to future generations. It may be an oversimplification, but I believe this explains, at least partially, why the Americans with Disabilities Act is either ignored or even attacked by those who choose not to comply with it.
A large percentage of U.S. residents think the ADA has little validity. If people are born with or acquire disabilities, goes the thinking, it is their problem. We — they reason — had nothing to do with it, so we can ignore the law.
It’s tempting for nondisabled people to think this way, because it absolves them from any responsibility and frees them to ignore the law. Even doctors (not all doctors) embrace this kind of thinking. They did not cause the disability, so they treat the ADA as a take-it-or-leave-it choice. But what if they felt that way about cancer or heart disease? Why do some doctors shy away from and refuse to treat significantly mobility-impaired patients when equal treatment is mandated by federal law (https://newmobility.com/doctors-still-have-no-idea-how-to-treat-people-with-disabilities/) while sparing no effort or expense when treating cancer and heart patients?
The answer is an unreasonable fear of ADA lawsuits, a lack of medical training on how to deal with lesser-known disabling conditions, and a medical culture that needs to be updated from its antiquated roots. Remember the medical cure-all that held sway for millennia — bloodletting? Whatever the theory at any stage in civilization, the practice was to bleed patients, sometimes to death’s door, and release the demons or “humor” or inflammation — the so-called “causes.”
Today, when it comes to patients with disabilities, many doctors are still ruled by ignorance — now as then.