Discrimination of Asthmatics

After throughly exhausting my local solutions to the unemployment problem, I began thinking about revisiting the concept of joining the Army National Guard.  It seems perfect; it would satiate my rampant wanderlust, provide me with a much needed sense of belonging, and teach me some awesome survival skills along the way.  However, while studying all of the different options available to me, I have come to the conclusion that the Military discriminates against those with asthma.  According to section E1.9 of the standards of medical fitness:

E1.9 LUNGS, CHEST WALL,PLEURA, AND MEDIASTINUM
E1.9.1 Current abnormal elevation of the diaphragm (either side) is disqualifying. Any nonspecific abnormal findings on radiological and other examination of body structure, such as lung field (793.1), or other thoracic or abdominal organ (793.3) is disqualifying.
E1.9.2. Current abscess of the lung or mediastinum (513) is disqualifying.
E1.9.3. Current or history of acute infectious processes of the lung, including but not limited to viral pneumonia (480), pneumococcal pneumonia (481), bacterial pneumonia (482), pneumonia other specified (483), pneumonia infectious disease specified elsewhere (484), bronchopneumonia organism unspecified (485), pneumonia organism unspecified (486), are disqualifying until cured.
E1.9.4. Asthma (493), including reactive airway disease, exercise-induced bronchospasm or asthmatic bronchitis, reliably diagnosed and symptomatic after the 13th birthday is disqualifying. Reliable diagnostic criteria may include may include any of the following elements: Substantiated history of cough, wheeze, chest tightness and/or dyspnea which persists or recurs over a prolonged period of time, generally more than 12 months.

At first I thought that this was reasonable.  I thought, “this is the U.S. Military for God’s sake, they can’t have someone wheezing up a storm durning basic!”  But the more I thought about it, the less that made sense.  They have people with vision impairments, right?  How to those people serve in the military?  Well, they have glasses, of course!  They are allowed to use a man made device to overcome their genetic shortcomings.  Well, that’s not a problem for an asthmatic like myself, I have my own man made device; an inhaler.  It’s far more compact then a pair of glasses.  It’s also less fragile.  I could bring a few of them with me durning a deployment as back-up.  I am unable to see the difference between my inhaler and someone’s glasses.  So that naturally leads me to the conclusion that the Armed Forces are discriminating against my kind.  In a world filled with today’s technology, there is no reason that something as innocuous as asthma should keep me from serving my country.

Many of you don’t know this, but I have always wanted to join the military.  In fact, I almost did during my sophomore year of high school.  Now that I am revisiting the idea, I have to be prepared.  I will have to subject myself to physical tests of endurance in order to train myself out of my asthma.

What really kills me about all of this is that, for the first time in my life, I honestly feel offended about something.  I feel as if someone is telling me that I am not even allowed to attempt my dreams, just because of the way I was born.  I do not like this feeling, and I refuse to stand for it.

[UPDATE: I will start posting comments below that people have made on other sites like facebook and twitter.  If you wish to chime in, please do so.  I love open discussions!]