Also… what’s wrong with HEARING parents wanting their kids to be ‘like them’, if there is nothing wrong with DEAF parents wanting their kids to be ‘like them’?
On a darker note… There is a government official in North Carolina that wants to make Cochlear Implants MANDATORY for all Deaf kids, and close the state’s School for the Deaf, as a waste of taxpayer money (Just put them in the regular school). [A friend of mine (whose wife is an Interpreter) has the article, when I talk to him later today I’ll get link and post it]
That’s just evil! As I mentioned before, the implants are a disfiguring kind of surgery.
Further I don’t even think it would work for some people. For example, my brother’s deafness is due to a problem with the nerve running to the brain, not with the mechanics of his inner ear. (Although, admittedly, I am not familiar with the technology of the implants…but AFAIK, medical science is very limited when it comes to problems with nerves.)
Implants today only offer 22 tones. That’s like getting a new set of legs, 12" long, you can walk but you can’t do much else.
The best thing to do is for hearing people to get an operation to be made deaf. Hearing people could get the surgery to become deaf. This would be the best thing of all & any hearing father who would not let their hearing child have this operation to be made deaf should have to give their child to a foster family.
“AFAIK, cochlear implants are generaly installed in only one ear, so any residual hearing in the
other ear would be unaffected”
If you can hear in the other ear, no need for an implant, just as Andygirl.
Some people just can’t understand what it is about deafness that makes it different from other handicaps. If it was just not being able to hear it would be one thing, but because most people use voice to communicate, deafness automatically isolates you linguistically. And therefore deaf people naturally form a community with people who sign. And therefore, people become attached to this community, especially since they’ve had to fight for the right to sign and the right to have that community.
So deaf people are often protective of their community, and are against things that will harm their community, no matter how hearing people might see it. It’s as simple as that. Other disabled people, even blind people, do not have the same kind of community, so there isn’t the same kind of resistance.
And of course, cochlear implants are still somewhat experimental. They are not even close to natural hearing. Surely the technology is going to get better. Now, how would you feel if you had what is essentially a beta version surgically implanted in your head?
Just a point that noone seems to have made. That is that the Deaf people find ways to communicate with anyone. Because they have no innate verbal communication and have a much more visual existance (anyone disagree with this?) they are much more prone to wave hands about and attempt to get the message across. A reason why such things as the Deaf World Congress (was it called that?) can go ahead. They all speak different sign languages (Australian sign language - Auslan - is two handed compared to ASL with only one) yet they all communicate with each other, and with very few interpreters. They are more willing to try and understand the point the other person was making.
Also, my sister was travelling through Thailand and met a group of Danish Deaf people. They managed to get along quite well, and my sister had to use them as translaters with some of the people that she met.
Also I have a friend who is the only hearing person in her family, yet she gets along well with her family and Auslan is her first language. She continually fails english exams (in university) because she doesn’t write in English grammar, She uses Deaf grammar. She didn’t interact with hearing people until school.
Because of that (purely anecdotal, but other people mentioned it as well), I don’t think that the father from the program should worry about the child running away if the child is born hearing.
I have also never met a Deaf person with whom I couldn’t have a conversation with, or who wasn’t friendly with me. I can’t say whether this was because they try to talk with me, or whether they feel pity on me for being the only person who could hear. Most Deaf people would have no problem with hearing people getting involved in their community, only if they tried to change it. Which is where the cochlea implants comes into it.
On a side note, I lived with a Deaf girl and her dog - a chihauhau. It was the quietest small dog I have ever been around. Because it couldn’t attract attention by yipping.
And of course, cochlear implants are still somewhat experimental. They are not even close to natural hearing. Surely the technology is going to get better. Now, how would you feel if you had what is essentially a beta version surgically implanted in your head?
Well, the technology has to start somewhere. The only way to know how well an implant works is to put it in a human subject.
I remember reading about some researchers who ran a simulation of what it was like to hear through an imlpant with different numbers of working electrodes, and they found that hearing through all 22 was certainly clear enough to understand speech.
The problem with cochlear implants isn’t so much the technology itself(some recipients have even been able to use a telephone), but getting the recipient to be able to use it to its full potential. IIRC, the medical community still isn’t entirely sure about the optimum placement of the electrodes.
“I think this question is worthy of Cecil as it: (1) comes from a questioner who is obviously dumber than a box of
rocks…”
The reason for putting CI’s into hearing people is so they have one ear to see what it’s like & compare it to normal hearing on the other side.
I’d much prefer all hearing people be made deaf as then we would all be equal. If you look at it closely, everyone is deaf on the message board & it’s all equal. No comment as to why I have more posts than anyone else
Cecil was referring specifically to the person who asked the question, not people in general.
While hearing people would theoretically make the best test subjects, I don’t think you’ll find many people who would be willing to sacrifice their natural in one ear to be test subjects(unless you offered a LOT of money, on the order of millions of dollars). Adults who have just lost their hearing would be almost as good.
I’d much prefer all hearing people be made deaf as then we would all be equal.
Umm, handy is just commenting on how silly it is to want to force implant surgery on deaf people who don’t want it. The attitude, “We hearing people know what is best for Deaf people.” If we turn it around, with Deaf people demanding surgery for hearing people it seems kind of silly, now doesn’t it…?
Since when was anybody here suggesting that we should be forcing people who don’t want implants to get them? If you don’t have a problem with being deaf, that’s fine with me.
OK, I’ve waited a bit on adding my two cents to this thread. But there’s been enough here to comment on.
I was born severely-to-profoundly deaf. In the early 1980s, I was seen at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles for evaluation as a possible candidate for a cochlear implant (when these devices were still in the investigational stage). I was turned down even though my hearing loss was severe-to-profound…it was explained that I was simply doing too well with my hearing aids when it comes to oral communication.
That I think is the key to a cochlear implant evaluation…oral communication should be the primary objective after cochlear implantation. Prior to cochlear implants, one of the big controversies was about oral communication versus sign language (it still hotly debated today). My parents were faced with a difficult choice when the diagnosis of my hearing loss was made: place me in a sign language program, which means the rest of the family would have to learn sign language as well if they wanted to communicate with me, or place me in an oral communication program, where there was certainly no guarantee of success. I can’t even begin to fathom the magnitude of this decision…they had to make choices that would have significant consequences on how I would interact with others…and when you think of how much communication you do with others during the course of the day, you can appreciate how important this decision was. Either choice would involve a lot of work and sacrifice on the part of my parents.
After careful deliberation and research, my parents chose the oral communication route first for two reasons. The first was that they would never have been at peace with themselves if they hadn’t at least tried the option…they wanted to know what the outcome would have been. The other is that sign language is used fluently by a relatively small percentage of the American population, and they wanted to explore options that would not have had me dependent upon a second person (translator) for face-to-face communication with others.
They made their choice knowing that if the oral communication option did not work, they would commit themselves fully to the sign language option. Their decision was made over the objection of more than one specialist, but they felt that it was their prerogative anyway.
The cochlear implant debate has amplified this controversey regarding oral vs. manual communication. Frequently lost in the debate, I think, is that parents should be the ultimate judge of what is best for their children. They have the right to determine what course of medical care is appropriate for their children, but they also have the responsibility of obtaining accurate, unbiased, and informed information from the professionals providing these services. They shouldn’t have to make medical decisions based upon what is “politically correct”, and that is what I fear happening to cochlear implants. If a deaf person does not desire to obtain a cochlear implant, then no one should force upon them. If parents feel that a cochlear implant is in the best interest of their child, then they should be able to seek that option after being informed of what this decision entails. But in any case, the option should still remain available.
Success with cochlear implants vary widely. Typically the best candidate for a cochlear implant is a young child less than 2 years of age who acquired deafness only after birth. I have personally met a number of individuals with cochlear implants, since I did a fellowship at a children’s hospital that had a cochlear implant center (I’m an audiologist), and have observed the degrees of success. There are some children I met whose speech is age-appropriate and intelligible. There are others that still need more time and work. But the technology is improving, and we shouldn’t discard the whole option simply because we are not achieving 100% results at this time.
Lemur866 said in an earlier post on this thread:
Well, there are still some cochlear implants that the FDA regards as “investigational.” But a great number of them are approved for “non-investigational” use, meaning that they are no longer considered experimental.
And no one pretends that cochlear implants restore natural hearing. Even hearing aids will not restore natural hearing. Once natural hearing is gone, it is gone forever.
As for the issue of deaf culture…
One of the core concepts in Deaf culture is that deafness is not a pathology or a physiological dysfunction. Rather
it is seen as an ethnic identifier, much in the way that some ethnicities can be identified by certain physical traits.
Since deafness would not be considered a medical pathology, attempts to correct or fix the deaf person would be viewed as inappropriate and even offensive. Hence, cochlear implants, requiring surgery with irreversible effects, are seen as the ultimate expression of the medical community’s goal to remediate deafness. It is considered, in essence, converting the deaf person from an ethnic minority to an ethnic majority. Whether or not the cochlear implant actually provides any benefit is considered irrelevant. Harlan Lane, in his book The Mask of Benevolence, admits that this is the foundation for his fundamental reason why he opposes cochlear implants:
I think that this is an unfortunate attitude. It does not take into account that the parents of a deaf child are almost always hearing (something like 9 of 10 deaf children have hearing parents), and therefore the parents may not adopt the worldview of the Deaf culture. Nor should they required to adopt this worldview. After all, as an American, I am not required to adopt the worldview of the French culture, or the Japanese culture, even though I have no negative feelings towards either culture.
This attitude is unfortunate because it seeks to eliminate an option from what parents can decide to do. I know that my parents would not have appreciated this, and neither would I if it were my child.
Apologies for the long post, but I had a lot to say.
Excellent post Shy Ghost! You should be a little less shy with such contributions.
I will, however, say that I completely disagree with the idea (I know it’s not yours) that being deaf is equivalent to an ethnic minority. That they share a unique community with its own special bonds, trends, and issues I do not doubt. However, as you said, 90% or better of their community are born to hearing parents, and I daresay there are many localities where they would be the only deaf individual present. Accidents or illnesses can result in someone joining this ethnic group, and I can’t remember ever hearing of anyone accidently becoming Hispanic. Plus, for some anyway, exiting the group may be very possible, which is untrue for other ethnic minorities be. Finally, ethnic minorities are inherently as capable as any other ethnicity. Any way you slice it, deaf individuals are inherently different in capability from their hearing counterparts. I think comparing someone receiving cochlear implants with a black man turning himself white is wholly spurious.
I wonder if I can pick at your brain a little to clarify something. You stated in your post that the parents are the individuals who should be the ones to have the final say in the matter. In general, I agree. However, suppose there were an implant that provided hearing capability absolutely equivalent to natural hearing, but it must be implanted before the age of 2 years. If a deaf couple were to decide that they did not want their child getting the implant simply because they wished him to be a participant in the deaf community, where would you stand on this? Would you support their choice or their right to make this choice?
However, suppose there were an implant that provided hearing capability absolutely equivalent to natural hearing, but it must be implanted before the age of 2 years. If a deaf couple were to decide that they did not want their child getting the implant simply because they wished him to be a participant in the deaf community, where would you stand on this? Would you support their choice or their right to make this choice?
I, for one, believe that they have as much of a right to let their child grow up deaf as Jehovah’s Witnesses have to let their children die of blood loss, by which I mean none whatsoever. It’s not as if their child won’t love them as much because he/she can hear and they can’t. Hearing people can learn sign language just as easily as deaf people.
Thanks. I know I haven’t posted often, but I do try.
In my opinion, it is the right of these parents in your example to decline the option of cochlear implants in favor of having the child being a part of the deaf community. I think that any true professional, be it an otolaryngologist or an audiologist, should recognize the parents’ prerogative in cases like these and respect it.
