To say that disabled people's lives have no value is vile, but that is not what he's saying. It's the unnecessary prolonging of suffering that Ivan Illich speaks against, the pressure to do everything humanly possible to eek out any extra week on one's lifespan, even if that extra week is a miserable one spent in agony. Now that is not to say that we should just jump off a bridge at the mere sight of suffering, but rather discern how our life is meant to be lived while letting go of our need to control everything.
I understand that argument, and respect the choices of people who choose not to be hospitalized at the end of their life but to die at home, but that's not the same thing as claiming that it is wrong to "extend the suffering of cripples". I can kind of excuse the use of the nasty slur "cripples" given that this interview was decades ago, but the strong implication is that he thought that disabled people just sat around suffering and would prefer not to have the medical technology needed to keep them living.
