Thursday, June 7, 2007

The Special World Of The Mentally Challenged

Once upon a time there lived a brain. This brain lived in a big city with many other brains. Some of them were older and some were younger, but they were all brains. This brain was a happy brain because it owned a body that was able to do many things. Every morning the brain awoke and did what ever it pleased with its wonderful body. It was a beautiful life until one day the brain noticed that its body did not function mentally as well as other brains. That is when the brain realized that it had a big problem. How was it going to be able to get all the goodies if it was mentally dysfunctional? The brain became full of vibrations and the body began to cry.

There are over five million Americans that are mentally challenged.This category covers all those that find it impossible to function due to brain or psychological limitations. Their enormous number is frightening. Many of them have severe social and substance abuse problems which lead them to break the law and wind up in prison. The lucky ones barely survive in a world that requires them to get along with others and make a decent living. The mentally challenged have established themselves as a class of people that lives outside the mainstream of society. And that class is growing without any solution to their problems in sight.

Nature is kind but it is also cruel. Its kindness is shown by the creation of billions of people with a brain that can learn and adapt to its surroundings. Those lucky billions have integrated themselves into societies all over the world. They work and raise families without the confusion that comes with being mentally challenged. But nature can also be cruel; it turns out tens of millions of people who can`t solve the puzzle of living smartly.. Those millions are with us and we have no choice except to watch them struggle to understand and survive.

The ball is in the court of science, only they can stop the explosion in the birthrate of mentally challenged children. Better methods are being discovered to screen those couples that are predisposed to have a mentally challenged offspring. New tests are given to warn pregnant women of the possible birth of a brain damaged child The millions that are born mentally dysfunctional are the innocent victims of nature. Those of us that are healthy are not to blame for their misfortune. All we can do is support science and have faith that their smarts will find a method to stop the spread of the mentally challenged .There is little else we can do.

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