ABSTRACT
T he late twentieth century might easily be described as the age of disability (at least in Western nation states). Public consciousness of the rights and needs of physically and mentally handicapped persons was never greater, in part because disability rights advocates were never more outspoken on the social prejudices and economic injustices suffered by the disabled. By analogy with racism and sexism, ‘disabilism’ was coined to summarize and subvert such discrimination. At the same time, in the same Western states, politicians and others entered into fierce and fundamental debate over welfare expenditure on a much broader category of disabled persons — the ‘chronically disabled.’ Included in this group were not only the victims of AIDS and sufferers from coronary, respiratory and other degenerative conditions, but also those incapacitated through afflictions commonly associated with old age, such as severe arthritis and rheumatism. Over the second half of the twentieth century the size of this disabled population grew dramatically, and since it required expensive long-term medical maintenance, politicians rightly feared its ‘crippling’ effects on state economies. By 1977 public expenditure on the chronically disabled in the US alone was nearly $50 billion. Contemporary advocates of the healthy body could argue that we were all doomed to this costly future for failing to take affirmative action against every conceivable risk to our health. From that perspective the disabled body in the disabled state became the fate to which we were all destined.
