Affirmative Action for people with Down Syndrome.

Affirmative Action for people with Down Syndrome starts with information that reflects the ethos of inclusion, non-discrimination and social justice for those with Down Syndrome.

Jacob at the train station

Information is knowledge, knowledge is power.  By providing this information, it is hoped that parents and others charged with the care of those with Down Syndrome, will also become more empowered to make more informed decisions. That is the start of Affirmative Action for people with Down Syndrome.

People with Down Syndrome have the same rights as anyone else to live a safe, integrated and normal life in the society in which they live.  This ethos should certainly exist and be firmly encouraged within childcare centres, kindergartens and schools, as they form the back bone of learning social interaction skills – what is tolerable, acceptable and worthwhile.

Should the education system fall down at any part, it is the child with Down Syndrome that will be most hurt by their attitudes.

Especially see our page on Hitlerism and disability today, to see what happens when affirmative action isn’t fought for – the consequences are unimaginably horrific, even in civilised, modern, western countries, Europe, Usa and the like.

The information on www.cdadc.com is always changing as new information on Down Syndrome becomes available, to help enable you to stand up for what is right.

We keep updating the information as newer insights and findings on Down Syndrome become available.  At times pages have had to be rewritten, as the newer information over turned previous thinking or research.  That’s one of the reasons why I say, nothing is yet written in concrete or stone.  Science keeps adding new knowledge and keeps comeing up with new ways of dealing with old problems.

The information is priceless – one moment it may be worth it’s weight in gold, the next it may be a screwed up piece of paper.

However, our understanding that that information gives us on Down Syndrome, adds to our ability to make better informed decisions for our children with Down Syndrome.  You only have to see the ever increasing life span to realise how pertinent new information is, especially when you push to have it applied to those with disabilities.

When resources are scarce, professionals will often try and find a way to decide who will get the benefit – eg heart transplant – and who wont, often people with DS can find themselves on the no resources for you list, including in the schools.  It is only by standing up and fighting, based on the informatin one has, that such discrimination has a chance to be ended and done away with.  Affirmative Action for people with Down Syndrome, now starts for you and your child.

Keeping the Down Syndrome information unbiased. Because we are an affirmative action site, we live by affirmative action, and what follows below clearly shows you how some people with vested interests will try and take away your right to speak truthfully.

Keeping all this information on Down Syndrome isn’t always easy. Some people with vested interests in selling products to those who have children with Down Syndrome, have sometimes become quite abusive when I refuse to bias the web site to give misleading information.  If you don’t stand, then there is no affirmative action, unless you are lucky enough to have someone else stand up for you.

I recall receiving one request from a Down Syndrome support web site, telling me I should not include the information on the disadvantages of some Down Syndrome treatments, as by giving parents the information, may stop some from using some commercial vitamin treatments.  Notice that, parents must be kept uninformed, and being uniformed means you can’t make appropriate decisions, therefore your ability to assert what is best for your child is lessened – your ability to properly enact affirmative action to improve your child, they try and take from you to try and get you paying them.

And this is another example of someone trying to take away your right to affirmative action:

At one point I even got inundated with abusive emails from several sales reps from one business in 2006, for providing truthful information about their product’s non-benefit to those with Down Syndrome.  It was literally a sugar pill.

One big round of abuse, August 2007, came from a large USA company – the same company that had the reps above on their payroll – the company kept sending cease and desist orders against one of our Down Syndrome information pages and whose legal department would refuse to acknowledge  nor answer any of my emails concerning their threats.  They were objecting to one of our Down Syndrome information page, which clearly showed their sugar pill appeared to have very limited benefit – if any – to those with Down Syndrome.  Even phone calls to their branch office in Sydney, Australia, proved fruitless, with them stating they would not try and sort anything out – it was just too bad if the parent company was acting that way and shut us down.

So, because of that type of abuse, this web site was then moved to a non-US server, which would require them to take out a court order to try shuttting www.cdadc.com down – which means they would have to prove what they were saying in the public arena and we would have to be notified etc.

It went like this:  They claimed I was selling their products on this Down Syndrome  web site – I don’t – therefore I came under their company’s rule and regulations – which I don’t –  under their company’s rules and regulations they stated they had a legal right to force a cease and desist order for someone making claims about their products who worked for them in any way – I don’t work for them and never have.  I am told that many people would have buckled under and just complied.  We didn’t.  We don’t accept that that type of bullying has any place in this world.  People with Down Syndrome and their carers and parents have the right to informed information on Down Syndrome treatments – should not be preyed upon nor abused by people and companies like that one.

You will be happy to hear though that the incident had a happy ending.  The company apologized and stated they were trying to crack down on sales reps that were misleading consumers into buying their products under false pretenses.  Cdadc.com has since returned to an American server. 🙂

When we first started providing  Down Syndrome information, it was because our fifth born, Jacob, was born with Down Syndrome. In order to try and help our son, we actively sort out information on Down Syndrome, that we thought may benefit him. That’s one of the reasons too, why we refuse to bias the Down Syndrome information we provide. We believe that you are going to be like us and want the truth about how to better develop our children in every way – intellectually, physically, socially … This starts with unbiased information, so that we don’t waste our time and money on products or services that have limited or no benefit; some may actually be harmful.

Still, you will likely need to search out other sites on Down Syndrome, to gain an even bigger perspective – some parents may have tried treatments or products that we haven’t – their information on Down Syndrome may be just as valuable.

Fighting the sexual victimisation of children with Down Syndrome

Yes, I have even found a website that trolled through webpages on Down syndrome and extracted images of children with Down Syndrome.   The owner of this website ran sex adds with the pictures and got a lot of parents and organisations upset.  I was perhaps a lot better able to deal with the chap courtesy of my internet hosting supplier, but it still took heaps of complaining to foreign police departments round the world, and in the end my host provider, who was completely onside in getting the scumbag and forcing the take down of the images, told me how to go about doing it his way, a lot of formal complaining and take down orders for breaches of copyright, using the material offensively and joining the pics of kids with DS with sex adds, was in some countries clearly an illegal paedophile behaviour.   Standing up to people, even the filth, is something you may have to do – that is affirmative action in action.

Affirmative Action in schools that are really not accepting of children with disabilities, though they may give lip service.

Don’t stop because it gets hard, and you may be surprised just how hard it will get.  Check out the page on School abuse of children with Down Syndrome, you may not be put through this ringer, but forewarned, gives you time to prepare and understand things before they happen, then you know better what to do when they happen.  School principals can be secretly opposed to having children with disabilities in their school and will go to great length to harass you and or your child in the hope that you will take your child out of their school.  They will try and make you feel guilty.   Finding an advocate early on if you detect this discrimination is vital as the school will play very dirty to get their own way.

Jacob on the computer

The school, for example may try to power on the guilt, saying you have one child, we have hundreds, we cant afford to integrate your child.  What they are saying, is that your child isn’t worth integrating.  They are devaluing your child, discriminating against your child most foully.  Every child has the right to be educated in school – ‘normal’ school. If not fight for it, but always fight for the funding, if the funding is not  there, especially for support workers to keep your child safe, then it may not turn out well at all.

When checking out a web site for information on Down Syndrome, try and remain alert to possible biases in the information presented to you.

You can often pick such web sites with biased information, that are trying to deny you affirmative action, as they will tend to play down or not mention problems or limitations with the treatment, try and sell you products that treat Down Syndrome in some way, or boast no end about how this product or treatment worked incredibly well with their child with Down Syndrome and should be used with all.

Another thing to watch for that suggests biased information, is when the web site presents lots of non focused research and information, claiming it supports the treatments use on those with Down Syndrome, when in actual fact the information doesn’t support the conclusions they are drawing – more than likely you are being snow balled / conned.  They are trying to undermine your affirmative action to chose wisely for your child, by misleading you.

These are some of the indicators that the information being provided to you on Down Syndrome may be biased.  Remember that if you get sucked in and spout off about the product, your own ability to act affirmatively for your own child may be diminished if the product and your faith in it is found to be wrong. 

Affirmative action though may require some risk taking too. No one can be right all the time.

Also, when searching other sites for Down Syndrome information, be aware of the different names of Down Syndrome

Masses of people used masses of time, effort and money to change the name from Downs Syndrome to Down Syndrome. I also found myself using the term trisonomy 21 right up until early 2008.  So, when you are looking at Down Syndrome, the other names that mean the same include Downs Syndrome, Down’s Syndrome, Trisomy 21 and Trisonomy 21.

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Legal Disclaimer for all our webpages on Down Syndrome.  Always remember to click refresh on each Down Syndrome web page if you come back to visit again, as they are updated – sometimes quite extensively – things change through research and experience. Also, all the Down Syndrome information here is for discussion – you should visit other websites, do your own research, talk with doctors, weigh everything up and make your own decisions on which intervention, if any, that you want to try. More on our legal disclaimer at bottom of this page.