Medical model of disability
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According to the classic medical notion of disability:
- Disability is a physical condition.
- It is intrinsic to the individual (it is part of that individual’s own body).
- It reduces the individual’s quality of life and causes clear disadvantages.
- A disabled person is different from what is normal (and their condition is less desirable than what is considered normal).
- A compassionate or just society will put resources into trying to 'cure' disabilities.
- The medical profession has the greatest responsibility and potential for helping disabled people.
The 'Medical Model' is often cited by disabled people's civil rights groups when evaluating the costs and benefits of invasive medical procedures, prosthetics, 'cures', and medical tests such as genetic screening or pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Often, a medical model of disability is used to justify large investment in these procedures, technologies and research, when adaptation of the disabled person's environment would be cheaper and more attainable. Civil rights groups see the 'Medical Model' as offensive, and criticise charitable or medical initiatives that use it in their portrayal of disabled people because it promotes a negative, disempowered image of disability, rather than casting disability as a political and social problem. (See the Social_model_of_disability)