Except for all the people who have non-spinal-cord-injury related mobility impairments like neuro-degenerative diseases. Those people will still need their chairs till we figure out how to fix it all.
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Bad headlines and insensitivity aside, I’m quite confident that, by the time I’m old enough to retire, we’ll know how to repair or replace every organ in the body except the brain. It won’t always work, people will still die, but it’ll probably be amazing and terrifying.
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Presumably you can walk, would you like to lose the ability to do it? I mean I guess you could voluntarily just use a wheelchair or some other mobility device, but choose not to. Why not?
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That seems optimistic unless you plan on postponing retirement until you’re in your mid-200s.
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That one made me chuckle.
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Nobody really wants to become injured or disabled, but becoming so doesn’t have to be “a great loss of one’s options in life”. A lot of those options are still available, but many of them become artificially difficult precisely because of the kinds of attitudes toward disability expressed in the post.
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To more directly answer your questinn, why don’t people want to use wheelchairs? Partly it’s because using a wheelchair is portrayed as some kind of awful fate (every time I see a journalist use the hackneyed phrase “confined to a wheelchair” I want to slap them) rather than an empowering choice that increases their freedom and ability to participate in society – at least to the extent that they aren’t being blocked from entering inaccessible buildings and spaces or pitied by the ignorant.
I know people who can walk, but have difficulty doing so, who find it easier to use a wheelchair when they have to travel longer distances or spend more time moving around.
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Junior is the RestoreAdvanced SureScan MRI Neurostimulator made by Medtronic, and it’s FDA-approved for pain management. (The Mayo Clinic study used Medtronic’s RestoreUltra SureScan MRI Neurostimulator.) Thomas controls it with a remote that communicates through her skin to a hub in her abdomen. “I have to have a remote to turn myself on and off, and when it’s off I’m completely paralyzed,” she says. “Whenever it’s on I can kick my legs out, I can walk, I can move my toes. I can do pretty much anything I need to do.”
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personally, I’m looking forward to a cure for tinnitus.
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I share in Anthony’s optimism. It’s easy to overestimate short term advances, but longer-term advances are typically underestimated. Assuming he has 30+ years until retirement, I’d say “why the hell not?”
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Not gonna lie, that might become an economic necessity. But no, my thinking was more like that of @JonS
I don’t believe anyone is honestly saying being immobile is better than a wheelchair. The question was why people with normal mobility don’t voluntarily use wheelchairs. As you said, there are many difficulties, some that can be overcome, some that can be mitigated, and some that can not. Certainly having innate mobility restored would solve all the problems you pointed out around inaccessible buildings and spaces.
I do wonder if some objections to this isn’t so much out of phrasing as much as the fear that it will be successful, and thus reduce support for accessibility.
It might depend on where someone lives, some areas have accessibility baked into zoning and building codes/laws. Obviously not all places have the same codes, but ultimately i’d see accessibility needs always being a thing because there are just some circumstances where you can’t just give someone a treatment and make them all better (ie: old age, genetic problems, really bad physical trauma, etc).
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Better accessibility makes spaces more usable for everyone, not just people who use wheelchairs. There’s also a lot more to accessibility than just mobility, like making facilities more usable for people with vision or hearing impairments, cognitive issues, and more.
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The question was why people with normal mobility don’t voluntarily use wheelchairs.
I covered this. In short, there’s stigma attached to using a wheelchair that isn’t attached to, say, riding a bike. The stereotypical wheelchair (like the one pictured above the post) is also boxy, clumsy, and unmaneuverable. People who use wheelchairs all the time usually get ones custom-fitted, which is more expensive (and often a hassle to get through US medical insurance) but results in a much more usable vehicle as well as one that can look much more attractive, but also one that can’t easily be swapped around with others.
Certainly having innate mobility restored would solve all the problems you pointed out around inaccessible buildings and spaces.
There won’t be a cure for everything. It’s not even clear there is a cure for paralysis yet.
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