So what does the wire connect to?
Regarding Deaf Culture: I don’t really recall anyone claiming that a lack of hearing is “just a culture.” I’d be greatful if someone could point out a thread on this board where that claim’s been made.
carnivorousplant: not all cochlear implants have wires. Some of them use an induction coupler that is implanted under the skin. There are a variety of technologies, not all of which lead to easy disconnection. Also, regardless of the external receiver used, the implant itself cannot be removed without surgery, and the surgery permanently destroys whatever is left of the natural hearing apparatus.
Cochlear implants raise serious medical ethics questions above and beyond those relating to the purported “destruction of Deaf culture”. Talking about whether “making deaf people hearing” is a good idea rather presupposes that we can actually do that – and it’s not at all clear that cochlear implants will do that reliably.
And of course, why would you put your child through such invasive surgery just to “try it out”?
If there IS a little bit of hearing there, and that’s an issue, what about hearing aids?
Thanks, Kellym. I’ve only seen the ones with wires.
Exactly the thoughts that have to be considered. There are no clear-cut answers to these questions. And it makes sense to let the parents make these decisions, rather than taking it away from them and giving it to a team of medical doctors (who may have their own agendas to push), with the support of the long arm of the law.
The fact that cochlear implants destroy the remaining residual hearing is the reason why there was a criteria established for candidacy for implantation.
One of the most important criteria is that the candidate must not be able to receive any significant benefit from hearing aids. Cochlear implants were developed specifically for that portion of hearing impaired individuals who are unable to receive any benefit from hearing aids.
Again, I’ll use myself as an example. In the early 1980s, I was evaluated at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles as a potential cochlear implant candidate. I was born with a severe-to-profound hearing loss, and just based on the audiometric thresholds, it would appear that I would make a suitable candidate.
However, it was determined that I was receiving significant benefit from the hearing aid in the left ear. My aided word recognition in the left ear is unusually high, over 90%. In the right ear, however, my aided word recognition is 0%–no matter how loud the speech signal is amplified, I am unable to understand a single word in that ear.
Because I was receiving significant aided benefit in the left ear, I was rejected as a candidate, and rightfully so. There would have been no value in implanting a cochlear implant in me, even in my right ear, since the left ear was already providing adequate benefit for me.
If it has been determined that there is no significant benefit obtainable from the residual hearing in either ear, then the person might be considered a candidate for a cochlear implant. But evidence of significant aided benefit from residual hearing should be enough to derail any possible cochlear implantation.
As for the whole bit about cochlear implants having wires, there seems to be some confusion. I would advise those who are interested in learning more about what a cochlear implant looks like to visit the website of the Cochlear Corporation, which is the manufacturer of one of the most widely used cochlear implants in the world. Their section on what a cochlear implant is should be educational reading for anyone interested in learning more.
Again, let me emphasize that cochlear implants are not a cure for deafness. Their primary purpose is to allow the recipient to perceive enough auditory information in order to learn oral communication—a secondary purpose is environmental awareness of sound. What a person actually “hears” with a cochlear implant is considerably different from what a person hears with hearing aids. Much of the post-implant rehabilitation process is about training the cochlear implant recipient to learn how to associate the new input from the cochlear implant with the sounds of spoken language. It is a long, painstaking process, but I have seen firsthand a number of patients who have developed speech that is almost indistinguishable from that of a normal hearing counterpart…and these children had worse hearing than I!
Some have made the argument that the child should be allowed to make the decision to get a cochlear implant when he or she has reached adulthood. Those who make this argument appear to me to be woefully ignorant of the fact that once a child advances beyond a certain age (approximately five years old), the chances of that child ever learning proficient oral communication decreases dramatically. There are deaf adults out there who have received cochlear implants in their adulthood, and precious few of them have been able to utilize the new auditory information successfully for the development or refinement of oral communication skills. The success rate with children is much, much higher.
The technology isn’t perfect, and anyone who claims that it is does not know what they are talking about. But it has improved dramatically in the last fifteen years, and there is no reason to assume that it won’t continue to improve in the near future. I’ll be very interested to see lies ahead in this field, both as a severely-to-profoundly deaf person, and as an audiologist.
However, I do not believe that cochlear implants will eventually become a cure for deafness, no matter how well the technology is refined. I believe that a cure for deafness lies in the area of cochlear hair cell regeneration, and research in that subject has been ongoing at various institutions around the world.
As for the issue of Deaf Culture, I talked about this at length in a thread that unfortunately disappeared during the Winter of Missed Content. My take on it is that Deaf Culture is a very real thing, and the foundation of Deaf Culture is the use of sign language. But in order to understand their objections to cochlear implants from a cultural perspective, I feel that a little history is necessary.
Generally speaking, children who could not benefit from hearing aids had no viable alternative except to learn sign language (or total communication). As hearing aid technology improved throughout the mid to late 20th century, the percentage of deaf children that could benefit from hearing aids increased.
Myself as an example: I was born in 1973, and was diagnosed with severe-to-profound hearing loss at the age of eighteen months. The only practical hearing aid capable of providing adequate amplification for me was a bulky body aid that had to be worn in a pouch secured by a chest harness. It wasn’t until several years later that a smaller, behind-the-ear hearing aid was developed that was suitable for my hearing loss.
If I was born just twenty years earlier, my chances of acquiring oral communication skills would not have been as great. If I was born just fifty years earlier, then my chances of learning oral communication skills were zero, for there were no amplification systems in the 1920s powerful enough for my hearing loss. I would have either learned sign language, or have been mute.
In this way, the improvements in hearing aid technology has decreased the number of individuals whose first and only choice would have been to learn sign language. Eventually, the point was reached where the only population of hearing impaired individuals that used sign language as the primary means of communication were those who were unable to benefit from even the most powerful and sophisiticated hearing aids available.
Enter the cochlear implants. As I mentioned earlier, this technology was developed to specifically be used in those individuals who could not benefit from any type of hearing aid. From the point of view of the Deaf, it appeared that the last bastion of ASL users was under assault, for if the cochlear implant technology gained widespread acceptance, it would reduce even further the number of individuals that would use sign language, and if the technology was ever perfected, it would possibly eliminate the need for sign language entirely.
Threaten the continued existence of sign language, and you threaten the existence of Deaf Culture.
The problem here is that culture is not a genetic birthright. It is an acquired characteristic. A baby born in France will grow up learning French culture; a baby born in Spain will grow up learning Spanish culture. But take just one of those babies and put them with a Russian family, and that child will grow up learning Russian culture. There is no “culture” hardwired into the brains and nervous systems of human beings.
This is the thing that some Deaf persons seem to forget when they argue that putting a cochlear implant in a deaf child would rob that child of his Deaf culture. But the child at that age hasn’t learned any significant culture, except for whatever parts he or she may have picked up from his or her family.
And in 9 cases of 10, a deaf child is born to two hearing parents, parents that are generally unaware of Deaf culture, and would rather their child be a part of the family’s culture rather than someone else’s. It is an understandable desire, but some parents have been condemned in unbelievably harsh language for it.
In any case, the parents have to make difficult choices, and none of the choices are easy. But the choices must be made by the family, not the state. The mother in the article linked in the OP objects to cochlear implants on cultural grounds…she also says “they’re not safe”, which is an untrue assertion. While I disagree with using the concept of Deaf culture to reject cochlear implantation in children, I still believe that the decision must ultimately reside with the authority of the parents, and that the state of Michigan has made some extremely poor choices in this case.
And I also believe that any ENT that performs the cochlear implantation surgery against the family’s wishes is in violation of medical ethics, and any audiologist that assists in the pre-implant candidacy evaluation against the family’s wishes is in violation of medical ethics. I find the concept of any medical professional that would actually undertake this procedure against the parents’ wishes to be absolutely appalling.
Deaf people don’t know what they are missing. They canot make a decision based on experience.
A Cochlear implant sure helped Rush Limbaugh.
Limbaugh became deaf after a life time of being a hearing person.
I understand there is quite a difference than being born deaf.
Quote:
The best analogy I can think of; if Black parents in the 50’s could make their children White, would they?
I don’t think that that’s a good analogy. Here’s a better one: If the parents of a child who is paralized have an available surgery that will enable at least some mobility, would they have thier child undergo this procedure?
Note: I was born with cerebral palsy and would still be in a wheelchair, if it wasn’t for the spinal rhizotomy that I unserwent as a child. Now I still use crutches, but am able to actually get around in a world designed for people who can walk.
That is also a bad analogy. Of course they would.
I’m trying to include in the analogy the aspect that the children lose deaf culture, which some people find particularly important.
Handy, where are you? 
Clearly we need to establish a well-defined set of criteria to determine when the State should be allowed to override the desires of the parents or caretakers.
If the child will almost certainly die without a procedure, and will almost live if it is performed, it can be argued that the parents’ refusal of that procedure can ethically be overridden.
But what if the parents’ beliefs are such that the procedure is fundamentally unacceptable, and that it would be better for the child to die than to receive it. How can we justify the belief that life is better than death in all circumstances?
By not being so open-minded that our brains fall out.
Being deaf is not a culture , it’s a tragic limitation, that denies or limits access to an immense number of things.
[ul]
[li]It limits social interactions.[/li][li]It can, and almost certainly will, deny the child advance warning of potentially dangerous physical situations, i.e. traffic hazards.[/li][li]It denies the child music.[/li][li]By removing the sounds of the natural world, the child loses some of the opportunities to appreciate nature, i.e. birdsong, rain, wind, even thunder.[/li][/ul]
The child’s world will be immensely poorer without this operation.
The court is quite correct. The operation should go forward, and the people who are trying to use this child’s welfare as a media opportunity to advance “deaf culture” should be ashamed of themselves.
As for “risk”–you can’t cross the street without risk. These days, IMHO the risk of crossing the street is greater than the risk of this operation…have you seen how some people drive?
Bosda, while I share your views on the so-called deaf culture, I also think that cochlear implants do not fall under the catagory of a life or death situation. They’re still very experimental, very risky, and in this case, I would say it should be the parents’ decision.
BTW, any updates on this story?
We are hearing people and do not understand deaf culture.
You are mistaken.
If you want to know about it, read the book, American Deaf Culture
(Wilcox, Sherman ed.: American Deaf Culture)
Buy the way, ‘Deaf’ (With a big D) means ‘deaf culture’, ‘deaf’ refers to not having useable hearing.
"“And since I understand that these implants must be done as early as possible to suceed, it seems said childs won’t be able to reverse the decision made by the parents.”
Really? Adults get them all the time, how about this:
“Former Miss America Gets Cochlear Implant to Hear Her Children”
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/GoodMorningAmerica/GMA020808Whitestone.html
The thing about deafness is it’s the one handicap that people don’t want to change. They don’t mind being deaf.
After all, if you haven’t tried it, don’t knock it.
As for implants, often, not always, they cut the auditory nerve, this means the person is often completely deaf…so they have to have that implant if they want any hearing. Limits what you can do, because you can’t wear it surfing, swimming,
playing football, bathing, (maybe sex but I don’t know about that one) & what are you going to do then? Better learn some sign language to go with it
handy, if they cut the auditory nerve the implant wouldn’t work. Cochlear implants will not help people whose deafness is caused by damage to the auditory nerve.
You have neither addressed nor refuted one single point in my list.
Is this The Straight Dope, or merely some sorry Leetspeak board? Is this Great Debates or not?
You assert that there is such a thing as “deaf culture”–I assert that Society’s current standards are correct. The burden of proof rests with you.
Because providing restorative medical treatment for a child is normally a moral imperitive. You must prove it is otherwise.
Somehow, I don’t think you will listen.
A cpchlear implant will not necessarily give back the things on your list. It most certainly will not give a deaf child any significantly improved access to music (note also that deaf culture does have music) or the sounds of nature and may in fact hamper access to those things. It’s not even clear that a cochlear implant will significantly improve the other things you list.
If you want to hear what music sounds like to someone with a cochlear implant, take a pencil and jab it through the speaker on an AM radio repeatedly. Then tune the radio so that it’s not quite on frequency. That’ll be close.
Cochlear implants do not “restore hearing”. They offer a substitute – a pale imitation at best. With considerable training one may make it possible to recognize speech, but there is (with current technology) no hope of giving a child the equivalent, or even the near-equivalent, of normal hearing.