“Every time the words “quality of life” leave your mouth
In relation to lives you cannot even fathom
I see a gun pointed at my head”
The ending to a really crappy poem of mine. I don’t like the poem as a whole, but I like those lines, because they’re true. (I’m going through poems in order to submit some of them to an anthology. For every good poem I find, I find at least ten or twenty bad ones.)
Doctors think that they are the smartest people in the world but they are not. They think that they know it all but they don’t. They think they are God — but that job is already taken. They need to learn that the world is supposed to have all sorts of people in it. In nature there isn’t just one colour of rose. Why do doctors seem to want to make only one kind of person? They have made me feel like one of an endangered species. They want only people who are strong and smart and swift. There is a sign at the entrance to the gene pool “No Dummy’s Allowed.” I remember the Bible saying that “the meek shall inherit the earth” but I’m afraid that we may not even be allowed to inhabit it.
Astra Milberg, Of Mice and “When?”, In: Difference: a little book about diversity. She’s a self-advocate with Down syndrome discussing the use of genetic research to prevent genetically disabled people from existing.
 
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