Oliver

Further, the medical profession, because of its power and dominance, has spawned a whole range of pseudo-professions in its own image; each one geared to the same aim - the restoration of normality. And each one of these pseudo-professions develops its own knowledge base and set of skills to facilitate this. Increasingly, disabled people, individually and collectively, are coming to reject the prescriptions of the 'normalising' society and the whole range of professional activities which attempt to reinforce it. Instead, we are increasingly demanding acceptance from society as we are, not as society thinks we should be. It is society that has to change not individuals and this change will come about as part of a process of political empowerment of disabled people as a group and not through social policies and programmes delivered by establishment politicians and policy makers nor through individualised treatments and interventions provided by the medical and para-medical professions. This, obviously, offers a very different and challenging view not just about the nature of the problem of disability but also about what can be done about it. Equally importantly, for today at least, it raises the question of whether medicine has a role to play in dealing with disability. In the next section I will answer this in the affirmative and attempt to suggests some ways forward. I hasten to add, however, that I will not be imposing my views on doctors, I will not be telling them what to do, nor will I be prescribing treatments for their own disabilities. Their own disabilities, in the social model sense of the term, are the disabling barriers of the doctor patient relationship, which render the experience of disability inaccessible to doctors.

Mike Oliver