The League of Iowa
Human & Civil Rights Agencies

Prevent crimes by the mentally ill with a federal Ed Thomas Act, Bruce Braley says

Federal lawmakers should pass a version of Iowa’s “Ed Thomas Act,” which gives law enforcement officials new ways to ensure they’ll be informed when mental hea...

3 Ruling Find No Link to Vaccines and Autism

By Donald G. McNeils, Jr.

Published: March 12, 2010, New York Times

In a further blow to the antivaccine movement, three judges ruled Friday in three separate cases that thimerosal, a mercury preservative, does not cause autism. The three rulings are the second step in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding ...

Crimes distort reality of schizophrenia

By Tony Leys, Des Moines Register

March 7, 2010

Cedar Rapids, Ia. - A newspaper lying in Steve Miller's kitchen blared the latest front-page news about a person with schizophrenia. The big black headline announced: "Becker guilty." The paper showed a picture of a stone-faced Mark Becker, the ...

Blind violinist injured in Haiti quake fighting the odds, once again

By Darryl Fears, Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 7, 2010

MIAMI -- As darkness fell on what was left of his music school in Haiti, Romel Joseph found a distraction for his pain and fear. He imagined himself performing Tchaikovsky's Violin C...

WHEN it comes to special education, Becky McGee and her 19-year-old son, Kyle, feel as if they’ve seen it all. And Ms. McGee hopes her hard-won lessons might benefit other parents. Kyle was born with orthopedic and neurological problems. In elementary school he was found to have several learning disabilities that included severe dyslexia and attention-deficit disorder. Ms. McGee sought for years for her son to get the kinds of therapy and intervention that would help him succeed in his ...

The poet Wallace Stevens once wrote: "The world is ugly and the people are sad." Stevens was an insurance executive as well as a poet and he spent his commercial life poring over actuarial tables. He saw how fragile luck really is and how our dreams of beauty and health are shortened by accidents, genetics, war and much else. A flap arose not long ago when the Fox cartoon series "Family Guy" featured a character with Down syndrome. The character Ellen was presented as the episodic love intere...

Industry reports consistently rate workers with disabilities as average or above average when it comes to employee performance, attendance, retention and safety. So why are so many people with disabilities unemployed? The No. 1 barrier preventing many companies from hiring people with disabilities continues to be "attitudes at all corporate levels," according to a report published in the February edition of T + D magazine, the trade publication for the American Society for Training & Deve...

A federal judge says a blind law school graduate can use a computer during the multiple-choice portion of the California bar exam, a test all must pass to practice law in the state. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer ruled Friday that University of California, Los Angeles law school graduate Stephanie Enyart's request to use software designed for blind test takers was a reasonable request.

Eleven-year-old Katanya Yingyoth was born deaf. But five years ago, thanks to an expensive cochlear implant surgery, she gained the ability to hear in one ear. That is, until she lost an important part of the device. A used one was donated, but it frequently needs pricey replacement parts. Trina Ives, whose son is also deaf and attends Capitol View Elementary School with Katanya, heard the little girl's story and decided to help. She organized a benefit concert with the goal of collecting the...

Henry's Turkey Service is denying allegations that it employed the mentally retarded men who lived in an Atalissa bunkhouse for most of the past 35 years. The company filed court papers last week arguing that the Atalissa men "were all employees of West Liberty Foods while working at the West Liberty plant." Henry's Turkey Service, a Texas labor broker, sent hundreds of mentally retarded men to labor camps scattered throughout the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. One of those labor camps...