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Showing posts from February, 2021

Living with Dwarfism

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 Cara Reedy - Being a little person in America: 'We're still treated as less than human.'   (The Guardian, 2019).  Cara Reedy is a program manager for DREDF's Disability Media Alliance Project (DMAP) and has been involved in the media her entire life (DREDF, 2021). Reedy is a journalist, actor, and photographer. Cara Reedy has worked for CNN for ten years, produced docs, food writing, and reported disability (DREDF, 2021). Cara Reedy was born with achondroplastic dwarfism. When everyone else said, 'Oh god,' her parents stood by her and loved her just as she is. In 2015, Cara quit CNN and starred in a self-produced pilot, and directed another (DREDF, 2021). In 2019, she co-produced a short document for The Guardian, "Dwarfism and Me" (DREDF, 2021).  Cara believes that disability is the world's largest minority that crosses race, socio-economic class, and age is the beginning stages of being represented properly by the media (DREDF, 2021). Someone ca

Dwarfism - Symptoms and Impacts

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Symptoms and Impacts of Dwarfism  (Kugler, 2019).  Types of Dwarfism   Different types of dwarfism have different causes and physical characteristics (Kugler, 2019). Something that each type has in common is the short stature.  Disproportionate Dwarfism:  This type of dwarfism means that an individual has some average-size parts of the body, such as the head or the trunk; they also have some shorter than average parts body, such as arms and legs (Kugler, 2019). The most common type of disproportionate dwarfism is achondroplasia.  Proportionate Dwarfism:  This type of dwarfism means that an individual is smaller-than-average all over (Kugler, 2019). Growth-hormone deficiency dwarfism, primordial dwarfism, and Seckel syndrome are part of proportionate dwarfism (Kugler, 2019).  Symptoms of Dwarfism Achondroplasia makes up 70% of cases of dwarfism and affects one of every 25,000 to 30,000 newborns (Kugler, 2019). Achondroplasia has a gene that does not allow the body to convert cartilage t