Accompagner, soigner, traiter les personnes avec une déficience intellectuelle, un témoignage

The author, pediatrician and geneticist, who works since 1982 with intellectual disability people, presents his experience and the way he understands these people (to care, to cure, to treat). He describes some clinical features: these patients are often fragile and anxious; thus, we must limit the complementary examinations and we well have to know the pathologies which can be associated with the intellectual deficiency; the diagnosis and the evaluation of the pain are often difficult, it is necessary to think of it in front of behavior disorders. It can be difficult to distinguish physical pain and frustration. Balancing risk and reward is not easy when the survival rates cannot be clearly put because of the rarity of the causal affection (for example a rare genetic disease) or of the extreme variability of its expressivity. With them the medicine is more often palliative than curative. He talks about the viewpoint of society and invites the reader to the debate on ethics. The constant necessity of a human help and their contribution to the quality improvement of healthcare and social organization make these persons a real marker of a civilized society.