Why are one's rights dependent on one's IQ?
A B.C. friend alerts me to ths incredible story. Can we help?
Low-IQ man will lose home and support help as government rules ineligibility
Source
LiWen Tan believes he is dancing for his life. At the end of the month, the deal Tan's family made with the B.C. government expires and the 20-year-old man with severe developmental disabilities is facing the loss of his home and the key support staff that have kept him stable for the past three years.
"This is so stressful, I don't know where I'm going to live. They're going to change all of my caregivers who care about me and respect me," said Tan, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome as well as severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Tan works as a "shakerboarder" for a Vancouver Church's Chicken outlet, dancing to his iPod tunes and shaking a sign to draw customers to the fast-food restaurant. This afternoon, he plans to take his dance moves - and a picket sign - to his local MLA's office in Burnaby-North to try to bring attention to his plight. Tan is one of a significant number of B.C. adults with developmental disabilities who needs government support services, but because their IQ score is higher than 70, they aren't eligible to receive help.
A year ago, B.C.'s Social Development Minister Rich Coleman quietly signed a new regulation saying adults with developmental disabilities must have an IQ lower than 70 to receive support, including housing, through its agency.
The regulation was the result of the court challenge Tan's family launched because LiWen would lose his government support when he turned 19. Rather than proceed to trial with the Tan family, the province settled out of court by agreeing to extend LiWen's support for one year.
Tan said his caregivers and group home team have helped him hold on to his job for two years and kept him out of jail.(...)
Thanks for the post. As a father of two sons with Aspergers, I always find these articles sad and upsetting. Indidviduals with Aspergers often have above average intelligence but are extremely "disabled" on the social spectrum. Measuring need by IQ is wrong-heade, to be polite.
This has far far reaching consequences, indeed will target way more than Tan.
This is disgusting and quite typical of the kind of shit we have seen from the Liberals. They removed audio book services for blind people too.
Good thing they're hosting a two week party for rich people in 2010.
As the father of a son with Aspergers, and someone who works in a related field, I am appalled. This is such jaw droppingly awful policy that only the BC liberals could have come up with it. (now that Harris is out of office)
First, it reflects a total lack of basic knowledge about Aspergers, but using IQ as a bar for recieving service of just about any kind is ridiculous. Actually, Tan very likely does not have a low IQ. That's why he's being cut off. IQ in this, as in most applications is not hugely meaningful.
IQ is simply the wrong metric to be applied to all people for assessing eligibility for the services.
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
I guess the assumption is that if you're above 70 (which is two standard deviations to the left of average) then things are hunky-dory. A job, an apartment, independence... it all awaits the 71+ group! The world is their oyster!
If anyone's interested, below 70 means ~2.5% of the population or ~800,000 Canadians.
Where did you get that from?
The only thing about this story that surprises me is that he had help in the first place.
The only thing about this story that surprises me is that he had help in the first place.
Sadly, appropriate. :(
I understand the need to draw a line somewhere but:
1) IQ is not a good line to use. These sorts of things need to be done on a case by case basis. Many people with autism have high IQ's but can not function on their own. There are many such disabilities.
2) Having support workers is not really taking advantage of the system. If one did not need the workers, there would be no real advantage to having them around. (Assuming the aid workers are not friends or family).
If Ignatieff had any guts, he would ask the provincial Liberals to choose a new name, as they behave more like a Conservative party, than a Liberal party, only slightly to the left of Ralph Klein.
This has far far reaching consequences, indeed will target way more than Tan.
Just imagine if they extended this to the voting system....the conservatives and liberals would be washed up. There was a study a few years back that indicated the most intelligent people vote ndp and green.
Of course IQ tests are not reliable because the more you do them the better you get at them. The BC story is just the government cutting corners and using every hair brained idea they can muster to do so. I would expect more stories like this in the future as they reach for straws fighting the looming deficits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkM5eyN8ytI&feature=user
Where did you get that from?
The IQ metric assumes human intelligence is distributed as a Gaussian distribution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
It's normalized to an average score of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. In the normal distribution, ~95% of people are within 2 standard deviations of the mean, which means in this case 95% of people have an IQ between 70 and 130. Thus, 2.5% of people have an IQ below 70.
Thanks Apples!