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Ian Birrell

Columnist & Foreign Correspondent

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Disability / Health / Policy / Social care

A grotesque denial of human rights is dragging on

Published by The Times (7th August, 2023) When Franco Basaglia took over a huge asylum in Trieste in 1971, the charismatic psychiatrist found a place that felt like […]

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Disability / Health / Policy

A stealthy new age of eugenics

Published by The i paper (27th September, 2021) Heidi Crowter is 26 years old, married last year and is full of life. She loves music and follows Liverpool […]

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Covid19 / Disability

The inhumanity of deeming some lives ‘more valuable’ than others

Published by The Daily Mail (19th January, 2021) Deborah James is a deputy head teacher, a mother of two children and, since her devastating diagnosis with bowel cancer, […]

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Covid19 / Disability / Health / Policy

A very deadly inequality

Published by The i paper (6th July, 2020) The investment guru Warren Buffet famously said that only when the tide goes out do you see who has been […]

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Covid19 / Disability / Health / Policy

Disabled people and their carers left living in fear

Published by The i paper (16th March, 2020) Eleven years ago, when swine flu rampaged around the planet, Katie Clark and her family were among those to suffer. […]

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Disability / Health / Policy

Deadly inequality

Published by UnHerd (18th June, 2019) We should welcome the fact that the issue of inequality has surged up the political agenda, given the lingering injustices around class, […]

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Disability / Environment / Health / Policy

Greta Thunberg teaches us about autism as much as climate change

Published by The Guardian (23rd April, 2019) Greta Thunberg is an impressive individual. Just 16 years old, she has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize after sparking environmental […]

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Disability / Health / Policy / Social care

Life appears to be cheap if you have learning disabilities

Published by The Times (26th December, 2018) It is hard to imagine someone dying from gangrene in London, their flat stinking from rotting flesh. Yet this is precisely […]

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Denmark / Disability / Europe / Health / Policy

A world without Down’s Syndrome children?

Published by The Mail on Sunday (4th February, 2018) Watching Erica Gaarn-Larsen playing with her six-year-old son Philip in their third-floor flat in central Copenhagen, it is hard […]

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Disability / Health / Policy

The slippery slope to eugenics

Published by The Daily Mail (1st March, 2017) On the surface, it seems unalloyed good news: a new test for families that is simpler and more accurate than […]

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Ian Birrell is an award-winning columnist, foreign correspondent, feature writer and investigative journalist. He is contributing editor of The Mail on Sunday, a weekly columnist in The i Paper and writes frequently for other papers and platforms. He is also co-founder with Damon Albarn of Africa Express, the acclaimed collaborative music project. (Pictured: Talking to refugees in Iraq fleeing Islamic State)... Read More.

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