This post originally appeared on the Medical College of Wisconsin Bioethics Listserv. It is posted here with permission from the author.

I have known Adrienne since the mid-1980s, when she approached me after I had given a talk for the NY Bar on the then current Baby Doe case, highlighting what I saw as the problematics of our stereotypes and fears of disability as they played into the public discourse. Adrienne was pleased with my comments, and that began a long, mutually respectful, and wide-ranging friendship. We subsequently worked together on a number of task forces at the Hastings Center, and I later hired her as senior staff for the New Jersey Bioethics Commission. Ironically, she landed at Yeshiva some years after I left it.

For those who didn’t know her well, Adrienne was one of the cadre of premature infants exposed to excessive oxygenation in her incubator, resulting in retrolental fibroplasia, the source of her blindness. Some of you undoubtedly know that finding the right balance of oxygen for at risk premies continues to be a controversial topic and a problematic area for research.

Adrienne showed incredible determination to live a full and productive life. Like some others with her disability, she was subject to accidents, and was badly burned in a household fire. Despite these discouragements, she persisted in living with fierce independence. Her ability to make use of the latest technologies for doing her work was awesome, and I remember her dragging her multiple heavy machines, along with an overstuffed suitcase, to various meetings and conferences. She was indomitable.
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Adrienne was probably best known for her work on disability rights, but her interests were wide-ranging. At times her commitments to the disability community came into tension with some of her other values and commitments, particularly her feminism. She struggled to reconcile her commitment to reproductive rights with her aversion to prenatal diagnosis and abortion of disabled fetuses. Her perspective was sometimes elusive to utilitarian-minded philosophers in particular; I recall several debates in which she contested Peter Singer and others who too readily assumed the limited value of a life with disabilities. Adrienne’s thought was rooted in real life experience and a subtle understanding of social attitudes; she could be impatient with what she saw as the airy, and often arid, abstractions beloved by a certain company of philosophers. Her points were sometimes subtle and not easily framed in the customary language of philosophical bioethics. It could take a modicum of patience and considerable intellectual openness to fully appreciate her insights and perspectives; I know I learned a tremendous amount from her over the years, both from her analysis and from her person and the way she lived her life. She was both deeply thoughtful and emotionally complex.

Adrienne placed tremendous value on her many close friendships and longed for a life partner, and the ability to have and rear a child. Sadly, these desires were never fulfilled, and that was a source of great disappointment.

Adrienne was a remarkable human being, virtually one of a kind. She greatly enriched my life and was a powerful source of inspiration to me, and to many others. I will miss her tremendously.

Alan Jay Weisbard (Madison, WI)