Disability - LB

Activists for the disabled brought their Segways into a federal court Wednesday to urge a judge to reject a settlement between Walt Disney World and three visitors restricting the use of the personal transporters at the resort.

A painless new method for detecting diabetes, using saliva, holds promise, suggests research presented Friday at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) annual meeting in Houston.

Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers reported Thursday in a report they said demonstrates that healthcare reform is on the wrong track. More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts.... Patients with multiple sclerosis paid a mean of $34,167 out of pocket in 2007, diabetics paid $26,971, and those with injuries paid $25,096, the researchers found.

Scientists at Sydney's Garvan Institute may have found a way of preventing people from developing Type 1 diabetes. They say tests of a new therapy have been proven 100 per cent effective in mice who are predisposed to the disease.

A University of Florida spinoff company in Tampa has sold its first student-originated rolling wheelchair platform to a Mississippi man.

Roughly one in 50 Americans has some degree of paralysis, and five times more people than doctors thought are living with a spinal-cord injury — nearly 1.3 million — says a startling study released Tuesday.

During Apple's iPhone 3.0 event, the presentation of a mobile-attached blood glucose monitor for diabetic users apparently bored some journalists in the room. However, the demonstration not only revealed Apple's most important leap yet in mobile devices, but also answered the pleas of a diabetic blogger.

President Obama, in his taping with Jay Leno Thursday afternoon, attempted to yuk it up with the funnyman, and ended up insulting the disabled.

For the first time, the Department of Labor in February released a report tracking unemployment rates among disabled job seekers. The survey found a 14 percent unemployment rate among disabled workers -- almost double that of the nondisabled population. And only 21 percent of the available working disabled population is employed, compared with the 65 percent of nondisabled workers.

Italian researchers have developed a wheelchair that obeys mental signals sent to a computer, they said Friday.  The user is connected to a computer with electrodes on his or her scalp, and sends a signal by concentrating for a few seconds on the name of the desired destination -- kitchen, bedroom, bathroom -- displayed on a screen.

What progress might President Obama's approach to stem cell research bring for the fight against diabetes, sickle cell anemia, and other diseases which hit the black community hard?