To the Editor:
Regarding your Sept. 17, 2008, front-page story “In Advocacy Realm, Specific Disabilities Gain in Prominence”:
Advocacy groups for many of the new “specific disabilities” are using the mantle of genetic authority to justify questionable expenditures of public money toward supports for so-called disabilities that belong in the realm of private health care. Several of these new groups seem more like jobs programs for nongovernmental-organization careerists and unemployed mental-health professionals than useful extensions of U.S. education or medical policy.
Public education, in particular, should not be used as the back door through which all manner of noneducational programs can be funded out of scrutiny of the legislative process. The fact that these special-interest groups and their guiding lights in academia are using such methods speaks volumes about their intent.
Alan Hull
Conyers, Ga.
