Hacker News Reader

Comment by jhbadger | Hacker News Reader

Something that goes without comment by the uncritical author is Illich's vile comment that medical science and its quest to extend life at all costs "extends the suffering of cripples". In other words, he doesn't see the life of disabled people as having value.

View on HN

Speaking as someone who has teetered on the edge of disability most of my life, so does essentially everyone else. We tie health insurance/access to healthcare to your employer for a few reasons, but I think fundamentally it's because we believe that those who cannot work are undeserving.

the healthcare-employment thing is mostly American.

but about cannot work -> undeserving, I think it's mostly idle -> undeserving. Americans are terribly worried about idleness.

To say that disabled people's lives have no value is vile, but that is not what he's saying. It's the unnecessary prolonging of suffering that Ivan Illich speaks against, the pressure to do everything humanly possible to eek out any extra week on one's lifespan, even if that extra week is a miserable one spent in agony. Now that is not to say that we should just jump off a bridge at the mere sight of suffering, but rather discern how our life is meant to be lived while letting go of our need to control everything.

I understand that argument, and respect the choices of people who choose not to be hospitalized at the end of their life but to die at home, but that's not the same thing as claiming that it is wrong to "extend the suffering of cripples". I can kind of excuse the use of the nasty slur "cripples" given that this interview was decades ago, but the strong implication is that he thought that disabled people just sat around suffering and would prefer not to have the medical technology needed to keep them living.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com