People Who Happen to be Disease-Ridden

It's dehumanizing to call people by nouns that name their disability, so I'm told. You shouldn't speak of "the blind" or the "deaf"; rather, you should speak of people who happen to be blind or who happen to be deaf. The same goes for diabetics, epileptics, narcoleptics, lepers, schizophrenics, and just about any handy term for talking about the disabled, er excuse me, people who happen to have a disability. This makes sense to me, especially if you're talking about the person in a context in which his disability does not pertain. "The leper wants to know if he is going to get hit with the alternative minimum tax if he takes his bonus in 2007." Otherwise, if you are talking about the disability, it shouldn't be all that hurtful to use the disability naming noun. "It's mostly lepers down at the leper colony."

The one disability where it may be OK to use the noun that names it is death. Nobody complains when you speak of "the dead". Nobody insists on your saying "people who happen to be dead".