Many other disability rights issues are working their way through our courts. There is no predicting, of course, how a Justice Sotomayor would rule on issues that are not yet before the court, but at least we know that she would have a life with diabetes to inform her decisions.
Much is being written about Judge Sotomayor's legal prowess, her ethnicity and her gender, but the other story is at least as big. It is the story of medical progress that allows people with diabetes to lead full, healthy lives. It is the story of how some 24 million Americans with diabetes, more than 2 million with type 1 diabetes, are increasingly contributing in the mainstream of American life. And it is the story of the ongoing effort to snuff out the remnants of discrimination against people with chronic diseases like diabetes.
Dr. Christopher D. Saudek is a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Diabetes Center. His e-mail is csaudek@jhu.edu.
