In Search of Better Angels

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Power and Epiphany - Reflections on the Personal and Cultural Value of Disabilities Part I: My Own Journey 1. Disability and Revelation: Lessons Learned and Flying Squirrels 2. Learning to Love, Loving to Learn: Mike and the Clown Faces 3. Inclusion, Exclusion, and Other Matters of the Heart: The Story of Nan 4. Disabling Prejudice: Aunt Celie and the Marble Cake 5. Lessons in Patois: Learning to Be a Jamaican 6. A Father's Proud Moment: The Day My Daughter Became a Gifted Samaritan 7. Recapturing the Spirit of Caring: Uncle, Brownie, and Sausage Biscuits Part I: Questions to Ponder Part II: Disability, Science, and Pseudoscience 8. Eugenics, Old and New: Mensa and the Human Genome Project The Tragedy of Involuntary Sterilization Eugenics Eugenics: A Continuing Legacy The Human Genome Project and Mental Retardation Mental Retardation, "Felt Necessities," and Ethics 9. Euguenics Revisited: Buck Versus Bell and The Bell Curve 10. Old Texts, Disabilities, and the Persistent Argument: For Whom the Bell Curves 11. Different Voices of Advocacy: Helen Keller and Burton Blatt Helen Keller: A Magnificent Exception Helen Keller and the Parameters of Advocacy Burton Blatt's Advocacy: The Golden Rule and Beyond Legacies and Challenges 12. A Place or No Place for Disabilities: Disney's Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Eugenics, and Visions of Utopian Perfection Tarzan and the Triumph of Heredity Burroughs on Genetic Predetermination Burroughs on Breeding for Utopia Utopia and Disabilities 13. The Polio Vaccine Research and Children With Disabilities: Sacrifices for the Miracle Personal Reflections on Polio The Salk Vaccine and "Institutionalized" Research Feeding Live Polio Virus to Children With Disabilites Research and Disabilities: Other Cases Claiming a Place of Value for People With Disabilities: The Continuing Struggle Part II: Questions to Ponder Part III: Disability in Historical and Literary Perspectives 14. Disability and the Need for Romantic Science: Darwin's Last Child 15. Words of Understanding, Concepts of Inclusiveness: The Wisdom of Margaret Mead 16. The Question of Differential Advocacy: Laura Bridgman Constructing the Disability of Mental Retardation Disability and Invisibility Laura Bridgman: The First Miracle 17. Disabilities and the Challenges of Equality: Looking Backward, Looking Forward Looking Backward Looking Forward 18. Diversity and Disability: Individuality and Mental Retardation A Memory From Ignacy Goldberg Jack London's "Told in the Drooling Ward" The Typology of Mental Retardation Mental Retardation: Redefining or Disaggregating? Part III: Questions to Ponder Epilogue: Finding a Voice - The Story of Bill Index