Disability and medical inspection: the outline of the body (Deficiência e perícia médica: os contornos do corpo), 2009.

This paper analyzes how biomedicine evaluates a disabled body in determining the inclusion of a person with disabilities in Brazil’s social protection system. An empirical research was conducted with 58 people who applied for the Continuous Cash Benefit program (BPC, Benefício de Prestação Continuada in Portuguese), a social protection policy for impoverished disabled people. In order to have access to BPC, the disabled person is examined by physicians of the Social Security National Institute (INSS), in which labor incapacity and dependency are attested. Based on different cases of people who had access to BPC or not, this article explores the thin line between biomedical knowledge and moral beliefs about the definition of a normal and productive body.