Repairing the body and repairing entrenched social prejudice are objectives that dance a troubling waltz; either fix can have unwelcome consequences. A repaired body may have been achieved through brutal trauma and in response to unfair social pressures; a repaired prejudice can eliminate the rights that its existence had called into being. The question of what constitutes any protected difference carries enormous political weight. Disabled people are protected by fragile laws, and if they are judged to have an identity rather than an illness, they may forfeit those safeguards.
