I may not have gotten the best doctor, but certainly got the best test taker.

My proposal: We check everyone's IQ first and have a "sliding scale" time to take the MCAT based on your IQ. I'll bet there are some people with ADD and dyslexia who are a lot smarter than me so maybe I should get more time.

Also, my med school admitted 2 people with Asperger's. They did okay on tests and pre-clinical work but clinical rotations were another story. They were both unable to interact with patients. They both were eventually dismissed from medical school…with > $200K in debt. Everyone knew this before they got accepted and everyone knew they would struggle. But no one will help them pay back their debt. So if there is not a VERY GOOD chance that someone will make it through med school, it is unfair to lead someone on otherwise. Unless they have a couple grand to spare.

So how much extra time did Dr. Epstein get? Probably none.What is your point in using his example except perhaps that he didn’t need any extra time? (Surely not what you meant.)

I still don’t see in your example a compelling reason to make exceptions for dyslexics or anyone else with claimed disabilities in taking the MCAT under the same conditions as every other aspirant. And once again, you nicely dodged the question of fitness. And you didn’t bother to answer the poster above you who asked why the additional time for a “learning disabled” applicant might be a uniquely necessary accommodation to them but not to others making no such claim. Nor did you bother to address Anon 10:25’s opening question: how much time is enough for the “special needs” claimant? Enough time to produce what outcome exactly?

The same problems he had in the classroom/ became assets for him outside the classroom.

He has invented his own methods rather than following known sequences of procedures. When receiving an award from The Lab School of Washington as Outstanding Learning Disabled Achiever in 1995, Dr. Fred Epstein said, “No one really knows what is the determination that keeps us going. It is basically a fire inside of us that is sparked by a passion in doing something we really enjoy doing.” His passing was a great loss.

So yes I agree it is a question of performance. If someone can perform they should not be held back or discriminated against.

You obviously have your agenda. And just as obviously, you conveniently pretend that medical education is an entitlement, just like any other activity for which the requirements of the ADA presently apply. Please explain why this is so. Please explain why standards of fitness to perform should not apply equally to all aspirants, just as they do for many occupations, like military and commercial aviation.

You plaintively make your case on sympathy, and just as easily make your backhanded smears on the medical profession whenever you observe those who posted here don’t agree with you. So you are quick to take offense at physicians’ suggestion that equal timing and testing standards be enforced but are untroubled in your ad hominem suggestions that doctors are unsympathetic boors for disagreeing with you. Nice try. Try a little harder; no one is timing you here.

In so much of medicine, time is of the essence. Asking a candidate to perform under a time constraint is not unreasonable, in fact it is a pretty fair representation of the testing requirements a physician will have to face throughout her career, not just at the MCATS. It is so much a part of the process, even well beyond completion of residency that it can be thought of as being part of the job.

No one posting here suggested people with learning disabilities lacked the capacity for significant achievement. You seem to want to hang the reverse on everyone else, however. And you very conveniently have avoided the issue of fitness. Does it not possibly occur to you that many candidates who aren’t claiming disabilities might themselves also do better in an untimed exam? The purpose of the MCAT isn’t just to produce a knowledge assessment of medical school applicants, it is that but also a demonstration of performance under a limited time resource allocation. It is a test, not a project.

LD means that there is a 15 point or more difference between the IQ test and the ability in the classroom displayed. Thus one could have a 135 IQ and they could function as someone with a 120 Q.

As a patient, I would be worried about those students who game their way through the system, rathering the learning the required material!

I am surprised that many of you can’t seem to stay with the original post question- which was simply one of ‘should people with “Legal Disabilities” be given Fair accommodations under the law’ (as The American Disabilities Act suggests) which is disturbing as one wonders how well you guys do at reasoning out complexities that occur within difficult treatment situations that lack a straightforward answer-
I would hate to end up needing a diagnostic workup from any of you.

Now to give answer to your FEAR—again, LD–dyslexics, ADD, ADHD, ASPERGERS, ask that fair accommodations be given during testing according to REAL disabilities. MOST people don’t want a free ride, or to bilk the system, the implications of statements posters make are deeply ill informed on the law, on the nature of disabilities, and generally flippant.

This question is not just about ADD, I realize most of you are hung up on ADD, but it is all Learning disabilities that are being denied here. Being a cynical person myself I would agree that yes, maybe a portion of your classmates are using ADD meds to get an “ extra edge” (huh, that is the whole of the college population right now, not just med school, it is an endemic & deeper societal issue) but the fact is that is not really going to make them smarter or better at anything in the end. And really your frustration with this is part of a larger ETHICAL question that the medical profession needs to grapple with. (And let’s be honest is not like med school students haven’t been known to take helpers for generations to aid studying before the ADD craze ever thought of becoming popular.)

The idea that no one who needs accommodations should be given them because a few people with one, very specific type of disorder are abusing their status is draconian.

No one is asking that young Doctors in training be released from the same workload, studies, hours, etc. as so called normal students.
I would expect that anyone with a disability who gets as far as MCATs is already determined, working and no slacker. I doubt this is someone asking to be let out of other duties.

So why is it so hard to understand that there are such things as learning disorders, that put certain, often intelligent individuals at a disadvantage in classroom situations. Often these same students are known to excel outside of the classroom, when information is put into practice.

Also, I thought we had decided it was no longer acceptable or PC to call people with LD, minimally brain damaged, stupid, lazy or just not trying as hard as everyone else. I thought we had advanced beyond that, but I guess maybe that does not apply to the medical profession?

And where do any of you get off comparing, alcoholics, smokers, with someone who has a learning disorder- or saying maybe someone just has a Low IQ or is Mentally Ill, as suggested by the one blogger, this is doubly ignorant and Ugly, in spirit.

To say if you can't finish the MCATs In the same amount of time as someone with no impairment then you are probably not fit to be there…
Completely misses the entire reason why we make arrangements for people with these issues.

It worries me that people are in the medical profession carrying around such bigotry toward people with disabilites. Step back can you hear how you sound? The overall sentiment in many of these posts is belittling and insensitive… how much do you know about any of these disorders, besides media hype or a pop article you read, maybe a few lines were dedicated to it in one of your primers, did you do Neuropsych rounds for a few weeks and touch lightly on it ?

So why do I say this, well I went through school with multiple, learning disabilities. I had and still have severe dyslexia & hyperactivity amongst other problems. They called it minimal brain damage; you try living with that for a while. When I was young they told my mother I was retarded, that label followed me for many years. I scored PhD level on a general knowledge test when I was 15, but because of my learning disabilities, continued to have real issues dealing with regular school. I scored very high on untimed tests, but if I was given a timed test I would fail, so my record was scattered with failure after failure. When I would be tested a few times a year in a quiet room, the tester would look at me with astonishment. I scored in the 99% on the verbal SAT, it being untimed, are you going to say I cheated? Most likely! When I went to college I never went out of my way to ask for special considerations, or tell people I had a disability. I worked very hard, never asked to do less or fewer classes. You can’t imagine my excitement after years of being stifled intellectually to get as much as I could out of my experience. BTW, I maintained deans list every semester and graduated third in my class. (You can pretend that this was because I was allowed to have some extra time on some tests, and use a computer to type my answers if you really want to.) I don’t tell people I have any kind of learning problems, but yet it affects me in many ways, hyperactivity is not something one grows out of, more something one grows into. Dyslexia well it is both wonderful and terrible. Yet I excel at my job, mainly due to my multitasking abilities, and visual skills. I never get lost due to the fact that I can quickly make mental maps, take pictures in my head, once seen remembered forever. I remember word for word most any thing said to me.

I tell this story to try to humanize this situation for you and because I think I am an average example of the tenaciousness of people with learning differences when they intend to accomplish something. Years of defeat teach us to be strong; working hard becomes second nature, when people have tried to tell you over and over that you can’t do something.
So don’t underestimate a colleague, who may have a learning disorder.

There are many reasons why I would tell you not to write off the skills of someone with a learning difference, and say they may be unfit to be a doctor or anything else for that matter. Time will out. If someone is not adept it will become obvious. This is not like letting a blind man do surgery, find a better analogy!!

Try to take a deep breath and understand that regardless of the fact that the ADD craze maybe annoying and granted some unscrupulous may well be faining, this is no reason to Disregard and Violate the rights of the many who have LD ‘s and legitimate ADD or ADHD. And, as far as for those of you commenting on memory, speed and general functioning-
Again every disability is different, every person is different, but most people within the spectrum of dyslexia, ADHD are quick on their feet, excel outside of classroom situations, in places where they can put their knowledge into use in the real world.

Again If someone is not competent to become a doctor, then even if they pass the MCATs with * unfair extra time advantage*, their lack of intellect, talent, work ethic, heart, will come out in the wash, Right? Or will it?

Seems like there are an awful lot of Average, perfectly NORMAL, Type A, left-brain doctors out there who got through all the training and memorizing, etc, and yet they lack empathy, understanding, humanity and the ability to form a gestalt…I guess the core part that I in my stupid way would call the healing aspect of the medical arts.

PS- to the fellow who said "being smart has nothing to do with medicine" well that does explain many things that I have wondered about for sometime, Thank you

There are physicians with ADD – like Dr Ned Hallowell, author of Driven to Distraction and other books – who are very good at what they do. I’m sure there are others with ADD who aren’t so good. None of them expected extra time to sit the exam, and they managed.

Life isn’t fair – plaintiffs need to put the talents they have to work for them, and not expect do-overs, extra time, whatever because they consider themselves somehow disabled.

Reductio ab absurdum: Who would want a blind surgeon to perform an operation on them?

I’m not arguing that we should disadvantage the disabled, but one should recognise that some jobs demand certain skill sets. You cannot become a translator if you don’t speak the language, neither can you run the 110-metre hurdle in the olympics if you have one leg…

I would like my doctor to be at his/hers best, at all times, even though some ADDers can become good doctors, it’s not a risk I’m willing to take.