WOOHOO! Med. exam mom won her appeal!

Congrats to Sophie Currier on winning her appeal (title is a link to the yahoo news story)! I'm so glad the appeals court judge gets it - accommodation to one issue (dyslexia/ADHD) doesn't preclude the need for accommodation for another (breastfeeding)... and shame on the medical examining board for discriminating against her in the first place, they should have gotten it without the need for a lawsuit. Hell, her pre-existing learning disabilities make her need for the extra break time INCREASE, not decrease - "oh, other breastfeeding mothers have taken the exam without needing extra break time" - yeah, but were they ALSO dyslexic and suffering from ADHD and needing extra testing time for those issues? If they're fast test-takers anyway, they probably made it through the test sections fast enough to go pump/pee/eat/whatever without NEEDING to ask for accommodations.

What if it'd been someone with dyslexia, ADHD, and fecal incontinence issues? Would the extra break time so they could change their undergarments on a regular basis have been questioned?

Go Sophie! Can't wait to see what advances in pathology you bring to the world, I have faith that you're going to go on to great work.

Presidents commenting on their lap dogs in September

This is of my own compiling, I sent it off to MoveOn.org in case they found it amusing enough to use as an ad. At the very least it would be a fantastic comic strip - but alas, I cannot draw.


"...I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog."--Sept. 23, 1944, FDR referring to his lap dog Fala while addressing the Teamsters Union

"And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it." --Sept. 23, 1952, Nixon referring to his dog Checkers while addressing the nation on television.

"It's one thing to attack me. It's another thing to attack somebody like Gen. Petraeus." --Sept. 18, 2007, Bush referring to his lap dog Gen. Petraeus during a White House press conference.


Free speech IS patriotic.

Northern Ohio's turn for breastfeeding discrimination

As reported in the Toledo Free Press a breastfeeding mother was told to leave a store for nursing her child discreetly... urg. too tired to type more around Del at the moment (who is on my chest being refluxy as I type).

Apparently lawyers don't like to be made to look foolish

I was looking online for information about the case of Sophie Currier, who is suing the National Board of Medical Examiners for not giving her sufficient breaks to pump for her four month old baby during the 9 hour long test and stumbled upon a lawyer's blog shooting off his mouth on the subject. I tried replying to his rant and he basically just got insulting pretty quick, accusing me of ranting (as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I am, in fact, quite proficient at - but I was not doing in this case... I was debating him point-by-point in a somewhat verbose manner, which shouldn't be so unusual to a lawyer.

The link to his blog entry is: http://hacklawyer.net/?p=426#comment-3676

In case he's the type to delete the entry, I'm reposting it here with my reply and his rebuttal, and including my reply that he declined to publish and the two email exchange we've had over that. I don't well tolerate this kind of idiocy from someone in a position of authority ;) So I'm taking my first amendment free speech rights as seriously as he's taken his.

It’s as simple as . . . what?

Sophie Currier holds a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard University. Not only that, she has completed her studies at Harvard to acquire a medical degree. She is poised to acquire a prestigious residency at Massachusetts General Hospital but cannot accept it until she passes her medical exam.

When she took it the first time, she petitioned the National Board of Medical Examiners for “accomodations” (read: more time to take the exam) because of her dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. She was granted this consideration, allowing her to take the nine-hour test, which allows for breaks of 45 minutes) over two days instead of one. Even so, she failed. She blamed this on her pregnancy which she says put extra pressure on her. She’s now poised to take it a second time and she wants an additional 60-minute break on each day. She says she needs this time to pump breast milk for her 4-month old daughter.

Ms. Currier petitioned the Board for this additional break time, arguing that she needed the extra time to pump milk to avoid breast engorgement and mastitis, an infection stemming from blocked milk ducts. The Board turned her request down, explaining that it could only accomodate conditions covered by the Americans With Diabilities Act. The test is scheduled for Saturday, September 15.

This past Thursday, Ms. Currier filed suit in a Massachusetts Superior Court, requesting that the trial court order the Board to grant her this extra time, plus a private room with a power outlet so she can express her milk in private with an electric pump. She also enlisted the help of Dr. Alison Stuebe, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a member of the Acadamy of Breastfeeding Medicine (I had no idea). Dr. Stuebe wrote to the court that “forty-five minutes is insufficient time for a nursing mother of a 4-month old to eat, drink, use the restroom and to fully and properly express breast milk using an electric pump two times over the course of eight hours. If Ms. Currier is forced to delay taking the exam, it will cause her significant hardship by delaying her ability to earn a living and to begin repaying school loans, and possibly leading to the loss of clinical knowledge and skills.”

The case, scheduled to be argued on Wenesday, September 12th, is considered to be a harbinger of things to come because more and more women are studying medicine than ever before. Three exams must be completed before applicants can become doctors. Thus, these rigid requirements are running headfirst into the biological demands of these many female test takers. But think about the precedents set if the Board accedes to Ms. Currier’s additional requests. Who’s to say that the Board must then make accomodations for any applicant who can document a particular medical condition which might require additional time and effort to attend to? How about the man (or woman) with irritable bowel syndrome? What about the person who can document persistent migraine headaches? These unfortunate folks never really know when these things are going to hit. What if I could document a history of chronic depression and the need for additional time to handle complicated tasks given the debilitating effects of depression.

How about if Ms. Currier just takes the time to attend to her four-month old daughter like any other responsible mother would, wean the child off breast milk and then take the test, complete with your “accomodations?” For an individual who obviously has spent her entire adult life in school, a few more months devoted to raising her infant child is not going to ruin her future nor can it seriously be argued that the hiatus will threaten the loss of her intellectual mastery of all this knowledge.

But what’s most troubling about Ms. Currier’s litigation is the suggestion that the Board’s refusal to accomodate her “condition” is some sort of persecution of a protected minority class. And the truth is this: complaints by the traditionally disabled - the deaf, the blind, the paraplegic - have accounted for only a tiny share of these kind of ”accomodation requests.” The overwhelming majority of them comprise those who claim such dubious disabilities as ADD, visual and oral processing diabilities, dysgraphia (really bad handwriting), ”phonological processing,” dyscalculia (math disability). I could go on but I assure you I’m not making this up. So as the ranks of the learning-disabled swell, so too the number of boutique diagnoses. And now this.

Ms. Currier explains that “this is as simple as ducking into the bathroom to pump milk.” If that’s the case, why the need to file a lawsuit?

1. Ahmie Says:
   September 11th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

   Here’s the relevant section of the ADA here:
   Sec. 12189. Examinations and courses
   Any person that offers examinations or courses related to applications, licensing, certification, or credentialing for secondary or postsecondary education, professional, or trade purposes shall offer such examinations or courses in a place and manner accessible to persons with disabilities or offer alternative accessible arrangements for such individuals.

   The ADA does NOT stipulate what disabilities are covered and what are not. This woman has just finished medical school through a pregnancy, where I’m sure that everyone she came in contact with told her how important it is to give her baby ONLY BREASTMILK for at least the first six months (logically, the time limit is when the baby has teeth to eat solid foods, not an arbitrary calendar date based upon the average age babies have two bottom and two top teeth - individual variation should be taken into account). Denying her request for time to pump and keep up the caloric intake required to sustain breastfeeding, as well as deal with the output issues from the increased caloric and fluid intake required to sustain breastfeeding, is discrimination and impacts not just her but her young child who is dependent on her ability to lactate for nutrition.

   I am myself both disabled (mobility issues due to hypermobility, joint problems) and entitled to extended test time to allow me to move around so my joints don’t lock up from extended sitting when I took the GRE. THe same issue has resulted in my not being able to sit for jury duty (I wanted to, actually), and I do have a permanent handicapped parking license plate. I am also a breastfeeding mother, nursing my second child (11 weeks old tomorrow) as I type this. Pumping takes varying amounts of time depending on the mother, the pump, stress levels, etc and is rather unpredictable. She could well require 45 minutes to achieve full emptying of her breasts, especially if she is stressed, hungry and dehydrated.

   As to your supposition that taking time off to care for her child won’t have repercussions on her career - oh really? Do you speak from personal experience? Considering how horribly undervalued mothers are in the United States in general, your claim is invalid at its face. Women who are mothers are the reason that the wage gap between men and women is still so drastic - non-mothers actually earn very close to what men earn. It’s the gaps in our employment that legitimize the discrimination in pay we receive. She has a prestigious residency waiting only for her to pass this test and is prepared to take on that demanding work while also doing the demanding work of mothering an infant. Only this test and the barriers it puts to her HEALTH stand in the way. If she were to develop mastitis from the lack of accomodation in taking the test, or if she wound up having to suppliment with formula due to not having enough milk/supply issues from not being accomodated (and yes, one or two days CAN make that big of a difference - I’ve had supply issues for a few days from taking a single dose of Sudafed with my first, add on that she’d be starting her residency soon after and her risk of ongoing supply issues once started is exponential).

   The way you state your arguments, you really sound like one of those “women should be home, barefoot and pregnant” types. Society has progressed several decades beyond that and women will not accept going back. The only issue that I have with her claim is that it’s not JUST her rights that are being violated, it’s both her AND her child’s rights that are being disregarded.

   Please do a little research on aspects of breastmilk and production before you rant about a topic you clearly have no experience dealing with. A good place to start is llli.org - the website for La Leche League International. There you can also find the text of the laws in this regard. For instance, if she had been in NY when this happened, she would have been covered by NY state’s breastfeeding protection laws, which are written into their civil rights code and have specific penalties for violations. “Pregnancy-related conditions” are covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. No stretch of the imagination required to view lactation as a “pregnancy-related condition” and so it is, by logic if not by name, included in those provisions prohibiting discrimination.

2. warrenclark Says:
   September 11th, 2007 at 12:40 pm

   As a father of a severely hearing-impaired daughter who has never once requested special treatment at anything, relying on her own strengths and acquired talents, I know the difference between a disability not of one’s choosing (blindness, deafness, paralysis) and one which is elective, like getting pregnant and demanding special considerations. I think there is a huge difference. Let’s not forget that Ms. Currier has already been given extra consideration and it did her no good. And what’s wrong with recommending that she simply devote six months out of her life for the benefit of this child rather than subordinating everything for her career? It’s a choice, pretty much what life is like. And just who’s on the rant here?

I can't find the exact text of my reply to him, but I pointed out that 1.) I'm a Signer and have been in and out of the Deaf Community for years, being Hard of Hearing (Central Auditory Processing Dysfunction) myself so the fact he refers to his daughter as "severely hearing-impared" is telling to me. People can be blinded, deafened, and paralyzed due to their own stupidity - does that mean that they are therefore not worthy of accomodations because their behavior was "elective"? And that lifetime wage losses that I'm facing, staying home with my kids while they're small, are well over a million dollars - given that the woman in question already holds a PhD and just finished medical school, if she doesn't get her license and finish her residency she's going to have BIG financial hardships. Also pointed out she was 8.5mo pregnant when she took the test the last time (and she didn't fail by much), only having 45min of break time over the course of a 9hr test with nearly full-term fetus sitting on a rapidly shrinking bladder - BIG distraction that could easily have cost her a few points and maybe she wasn't aware that she was protected by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act at the time, in addition to the ADA (she has learning disabilities including dyslexia that garnered her extra test time, but not extra break time).

His reply to those points via email:

Warren Clark

to me

When you cut through all the BS and see that the real
complaint is about all the millions at risk, I see what
your priorities (and Ms. Currier's) are. I need say no
more. Hard of hearing indeed. No shame at all.

Your response is not worthy or publication.

WLC


And my emailed response to him:
well, I've got my own blog to publicize it on then. And "Hard of hearing indeed" so you're also an audiologist now? Wow are you talented, sir. There are not "millions at risk" here, there is gender equality and fairness at risk here. And I think the real problem you're having is a woman is making you look like an idiot.


a link to a new story about this issue is at
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1030870