Consequences Of The Disability Act - 10 April 1998

Lately we've been so taken up with big themes – and one scandalous theme – that much interesting stuff has had to be overlooked. Well, since I'm basking, or sauntering at the moment, through a sort of Kew Gardens of the South under towering Georgia pines and stopping occasionally to obey Walter Hagen's reminder to all golfers, "Take time to smell the flowers!" I am (I hope I am) beyond recall for any catastrophe that might befall the republic this weekend. I've had time to look over some of those neglected stories.

It's been my evening habit, for a long time now, first to contrive what E.B. White called "the most beautiful sound in America", the tinkle of ice at twilight. And then to sit down with a legal-size pad and make notes on the news. And then forget them. So that at the weekend, I find myself talking about a topic that occurred to me usually that morning or the night before. But early this past week, I looked back over these pads for the months of February and March and came on all sorts of engaging ingredients, none of which might make a complete meal but together, in the weeks to come, could compose what the Scotsman called "a fine confusin' mess of feedin'".

It's only eight years ago since President Bush signed a bill that he'd pushed hard for through Congress: a bill to forbid discrimination against disabled people. Not a bill you'd think any politician dare be against any more than he would come out against Santa Claus or Mother. I remember how everybody of whatever party felt good about this. We saw more ramps going into buildings with high steps, folding ramps on buses, special seats in theatres. And, in New York, the planing-down of the edges of sidewalks. Everywhere you went you became aware, with a little wince, of how long we made no provision outside hospitals for people permanently disabled. The point of the act was to help disabled people be as normal as possible. Normal. Doing what? "Oh come now!" we began to say, reading the Congressional debate. But after eight years, many more people who never gave the act a second thought are saying either, "Oh come now!" or "Oh, well! I never thought of that!"

In the beginning, the act, since it was to cover mental as well as physical disability, opened itself up to the recognition of every sort of defined mental illness. And it was officially calculated that about 40 million Americans, that's one in six, would have a legitimate claim on the bill.

Well, last month, a claimant appeared before the United States Supreme Court and, as always before that court, the plaintiff claiming discrimination was an individual. But one whose case, if her case is upheld, will almost automatically apply to millions similarly disabled and, in this case, several millions who have tested HIV positive. That's what the petitioner claims as a disability. And what does that open up? An extended definition of what is normal life.

The bill defines eligible people as people "suffering major impairment of normal activity". There are going to be some legal hassles over what is major and what is minor. And that's because we've become obsessed with the adjective 'major' instead of 'big'.

Well, until a few months ago, nobody in the world of sport thought to ask the question, "How much does his equipment help a professional to pursue his normal activity?" And then there appeared on the disabilities scene a Mr Casey Martin. He was not good enough to be on the regular pro tour, though he'd like to be. He played in a minor league, but this year he won a tournament. He's been using a golf cart, which is absolutely forbidden among pros. Walking and sustaining your energy and your skill over four 18-hole rounds has always gone without saying as being essential to the game, and your status in it.

But now, here is one man who has a serious circulatory deficiency in his legs and probably could not manage to walk a whole 18 holes. He appealed to the Professional Golfers' Association for permission always to use a golf cart. We're talking about electric golf carts. The PGA denied him. He went on to appeal to a circuit court and his appeal was upheld. "Yes, he may use a cart".

He's now trying to qualify for the United States Open Championship in June. And now hundreds of golf officials and golfers at the top are already waiting for another shoe to drop. How about the diabetics on tour? How about Steve Elkington who has, of all afflictions for a golfer, an allergy to grass. Maybe they shouldn't play on grass!

The wider anxiety is not so much about the Disability Act as such, but about what it portends. The court ruled that the Professional Golfers' Association is also a public accommodation. It takes in crowds, it charges admission, it hires television sponsors who help pay vast sums to winners. So, really what the court was saying was that the so-called ruling bodies of a sport – the PGA, the United States' Tennis Association, the National Basketball Association and so on – are not the final adjudicators of their own rules.

Any day now, some smart guy is going to challenge the United States' Golf Association to legalise his cunning new design for a putter which, at the moment, stands in Golf House, in New Jersey, along with about a hundred other strange putters which the USGA has declared illegal in all tournament golf. Same with balls and other equipment. Manufacturers see bright days ahead. The officials, nothing but dark skies.

The New York Times, our last paper of record whose 15 columns of Judge Wright's ruling in the Paula Jones case I read and digested for you last week, the New York Times also has four absolutely first-class medical correspondents whose whole life is with the paper. Even so, the Times very rarely prints the results of a clinical trial on the front page. And never in its 100-odd year history has it printed a study on the front, or any other page, a medical study done by a nine-year-old girl. It was published last month by the Journal of the American Medical Association whose editor described the study as "amazing in its simplicity and the clarity of its results".

The nine-year-old, Emily Rosa, in a small town in Colorado in the Rockies, was preparing to do an experiment for a science class or fair at her school. She wasn't quite sure what to do it on when she glanced up at the television screen and saw a programme on a widely-used healing technique of alternative medicine, known as Therapeutic Touch. Which, being translated into English from the Greek, means simply "touch treatment" though the practitioners think of the touch as healing.

It doesn't actually involve touching. Its practitioners pass their hands over a patient's body and the patient is said to feel the curative effects of what they, the touchers or non-touchers, call "the human energy field". Way back in the 18th Century, there was a name for it, Dr Mesmer's Animal Magnetism. He thought he could heal young women by standing behind a door. Benjamin Franklin said he could heal them by not standing behind a door. Well now this hand-in-the-air technique is practised throughout the world in countries both civilised and primitive, and already so-called healers are up in arms at the audacity of little Emily Rosa and the nerve of the great Journal of the American Medical Association in publishing her study.

What she thought she'd so was to ask the healers, the practitioners, if they'd come and be tested by her to see if they could feel her human energy field. The experiment was as simple as running water. She put up a screen between her and the healer, two holes in it, through which the testee would push both hands. Then Emily would flip a coin to decide which of the testee's hands her hand would hover over. The testee would then say which. Twenty-one practitioners took 280 tests conducted by Emily, the moppet. How did these docs accept the invitation? They are noticeably suspicious of people on the outside who are suspicious of them.

Emily's mother had the answer to that one. Probably very few of them took the test seriously and clearly none felt threatened by a nine-year-old girl. Anyway, in the result, the healers identified the location of Emily's hovering hand only 44% of the time. At random, it had been proved they guessed right half the time. Which absolutely means none of the time. Commented Dr George Lunberg, the editor of the distinguished journal, "It was a jewel of a study and of course proves the whole stuff is rubbish". Midnight howls from touch therapists around the globe.

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a flash of extraordinary, indeed unique, brilliance. When I was looking up the date of the American Disabilities Act, I noticed an item alongside, same month, same year, July 1990. The Dow Jones industrial average of stocks pushed to an all-time high, finishing at 2,999.75. Wow! I well recall the excitement when a day or two later the market did jump over 3,000 and an old English rogue of a golf writer we all loved greatly at once offered to stand drinks all round. "But", as he put it, "after due consideration, I decided not to".

Well, last Monday afternoon, the Dow Jones went for the first time over 9,000. General rejoicing. But the moment the experts were tapped for interpretation, they said, "It doesn't mean a thing, except symbolically". "Symbolic of what?" "Just good times!"

"Good times!" commented one man with an unpleasantly good record of seeing a few months ahead, "Yes, rollicking good times until this July by which time I expect we'll feel the full slam-bang impact of the Asian flu".

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