(Aeon) – When providers and researchers are able-bodied while patients are disabled, the chasm in lived experience, motivation and immersion in every last nuance of a condition can often be vast. In medicine, the traditional model for researching disabilities repeats itself again and again: nondisabled researchers conduct their studies ‘on’ disabled people as their subjects. While there may be nothing inherently wrong with this mode of scholarship, it carries limitations that should be acknowledged. The fact is: patients can have different priorities from clinicians. They can see things that clinicians may not recognise because they accrue vital first-person knowledge that comes from living with disability or illness. And they are most certainly stakeholders in the research outcome of their own disease. (Read More)