Parents of children with disabilities often share their stories to attest to the positive impact parenting such a child has had on their lives. It is important to give due respect to such testimony, but what does due respect entail? Recently Chris Kaposy has argued in “Choosing Down Syndrome,” that respect requires us to not dismiss such narratives as the result of adaptive preferences. Dana argues that while this is important, it may not be enough. First, she introduces a problematic perspective towards this kind of testimony, which she calls the ‘Pedestal Perspective’: When the audience is presented with the retrospective views and values of these speakers, they may be tempted to interpret their views as an outgrowth, not of adaptive preferences, but of the speaker's extraordinary virtuous character. 

From the pedestal perspective, audience members can thus view the testimony of others as reliable, admirable even, but not learn anything about their own predicament. While the pedestal perspective is epistemically coherent it may not be normatively justifiable. A person’s unwillingness [or incapacity] to apply the lessons of these speakers to one’s own deliberative situation may amount to testimonial injury - and if systematic, perhaps a form of injustice. 

Dana Howard is Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University Division of Bioethics. She is also a member of the OSU Philosophy Department and the Center for Ethics and Human Values. Prior to coming to OSU, she was a post-doctoral fellow in the Clinical Center Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. She specialises in bioethics, ethical theory, and social and political philosophy.