I met a family over the weekend with a very special child, a young baby who was born both deaf and blind, with cerebral palsy and epilepsy, but who survived. She cannot talk. She cannot walk. But she could still smile. What struck me was not only the bravery of the little girl’s family in dealing with what must have been so very unexpected, but also the fact that right in the heart of our communities are examples of where the technical capabilities of modern healthcare outstrip society’s ability, and/or willingness, to cope with the consequences.

Consider the impact of medical advances in prolonging life. Science and technology have pushed the limits of medicine beyond our expectations, and beyond the state’s ability to cope with such a change, and sometimes even beyond the ability of medical ethics to cope with those changes.

These are the people who are ignored by society and by government not out of malice, sometimes not even out of deliberate neglect, but merely because so few know that the problems exist.

Too many people are living in this twilit obscurity. Their needs must be brought into the light of public attention by politicians. There are some 23,000 deafblind people in the UK such as the baby I held in my arms, for example, but some of their very specific needs rarely enter the public discourse. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt is always happy to trumpet waiting list cuts, but when did you ever hear her about the long waiting lists for cochlear implants? Having deafblindness is not high-profile (in the sense that it gets much media attention), and the charities who work on their behalf don’t have the ‘stars’ to raise that profile. So these people and their families languish in comparative obscurity, battling every step of the way for recognition of their needs.

Take another example, that of learning disabilities. There are twenty thousand people with a learning disability who have no access to day service provision – which is why so many are, first and foremost, simply lonely. Provision in day care centres where it does exist is sometimes just a cup of tea and a jigsaw – hardly stimulating. Yet Primary Care Trusts are faced with continual squeezes on budgets, and services such as those for people with learning disabilities are often first up for the cut. The sad fact is that it simply isn’t fashionable, and doesn’t lend itself to numerical targets.

The charity MIND has reported worrying evidence of ageism in this area too. When people with learning disabilities reach the age of 65, they are covered by a different National Service Framework and so are no longer classified as a ‘working age adult’ but as an ‘older person’. This has an impact on the way in which they are funded, as local authorities operate implicit age barriers in their services. For example, the Mental Illness Specific Grants will only fund services developed for ‘working age people’. When you get to 65, you can no longer access the day centre funding by the MISG. The older you get, the fewer the range of services you can access becomes.

At the moment, the Government’s approach to social problems fails to deal with these problems created by “modernity” and/or “languishing” in obscurity. Progress in medicine is most certainly a good thing, but we have to ensure we can cope with the consequences (and the benefits) that progress brings with it – as well as having the ethical debates too.

By failing to do this, society condemns those who most need help to live in obscurity, often unhelped and sometimes sadly incapable themselves.