Narrating Normalcy: Disability, Medicine and Ethics Commentary on Stowe et al., Journal on Developmental Disabilities, 13(2), 2007

"[T]he challenge of the brave new world depends on how we will use science, policy, history, and ethics " (Stowe, Turnbull, Schrandt, & Rack, this issue, p. 57). It is in this way that Stowe et al. conclude their simulating article, raising significant issues. In addressing their important article, I would first suggest that it is not so much how we will "use " science, policy, history, and ethics. Rather, it is how we will, as moral actors and society, choose to shape them. Second, the literature in the social sciences in general, and in particular those in the history and philosophy of science, point to the way in which our notions of science, policy, history and ethics are not static or value neutral. Rather, they are shaped in accordance with power relations and social norms. The literature in Critical Disability Studies points to the way in which such knowledge systems may be seen as disabling (Oliver, 1996). Within the Australian context, I have participated in an exploration of the way in which people with disabilities are constructed as other, outside the nice, normal and natural. That is, they are others outside of the mora