Electronic Aids for Severely Handicapped People

On sterilising severely mentally handicapped people.

At the time of writing, the House of Lords in England had not ruled in the case ofJeanette-a seventeen-year-old with allegedly the skills of at most a five or six-year-old whose mother and gynaecologist wished to perform probably irreversible sterilisation by an operation to tie her fallopian tubes (1). Whatever the legal decision, the ethical issues underlying decisions of this kind deserve an...

Letting die severely handicapped children.

SIR I am a member of Prospect. We came into being to support Dr Leonard Arthur. We are all parents who have, or have had severely handicapped children and think our children ought to have been allowed to sleep on in peace instead of being kept alive by all the medical techniques. We have sent a Limitation ofTreatment Bill to all MPs. Most support it but no one yet has offered to undertake it as...

MindDesktop - Computer Accessibility for Severely Handicapped

Recent advances in electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) enable communication for people with severe disabilities. In this paper we present a system that enables the use of regular computers using an off-the-shelf EEG/EMG headset, providing a pointing device and virtual keyboard that can be used to operate any Windows based system, minimizing the user effort required for inter...

Pregnancy in a severely mentally handicapped adult.

What happens when we discover that a severely mentally handicapped girl, resident under our care, is heavily pregnant? What options are open to us in her management? What are the legal and ethical issues involved? How do we ensure that she receives the best possible care and protection and will the involvement of the police actually make the situation worse? Few of us have had the experience of...

KOMBE Communication Aids for the Handicapped