Say we discovered an inexpensive way to treat complete loss of sight/hearing or both; complete restoration of the sense no matter how it was lost.
I’ve read for the deaf especially that the condition becomes, for want of better terms, part of an identity and gives a great sense of community. What kind of percentages of blind or deaf people would simply return a ‘No thanks, I’m fine as I am’ if offered an effective treatment?
Can I add gays to the list with the first post to make this thread interesting?
ETA: That was where you were going with this, right?
I think the blind and the deaf would have VERY different attitudes. Very few blind people would reject a chance to see, but I think a lot of deaf people would feel a great loss of community if they could hear.
If you have nothing to add, why don’t you jog on.
I dunno, i have heard stories (no cite) of blind people that got some partial sight back that didn’t like it too much. Something about sensory overload and not being able to handle the new information well.
That being said, I think that’s more a learning curve thing than an outright rejection.
I do agree that the deaf community is more insular about being deaf, and would probably have a higher rate of rejection.
For both the deaf and blind, a sizable percentage are elderly people who could hear and see for most of their lives, and have only recently lost the ability. I imagine most of them would happily take the opportunity to regain their lost sense. My grandfather was blind and my grandmother currently is deaf, and I can’t imagine either of them rejecting such an opportunity.
It isn’t purely hypothetical for the deaf community. Cochlear implants can allow some deaf people to hear at least partially and yet some still reject the idea and may even resent those that choose to have the procedure done. There are also examples of deaf parents who struggled with the decision for their deaf child and decided they wanted the child to remain deaf so that they would be raised fully immersed in deaf culture.
Helen Keller said something to the effect that being deaf cuts you off from people while being blind cuts you off from things. So I think blind people might relish the chance to see but deaf people might have mixed feelings about being cut off from their deaf community. My understanding is that there’s a huge difference between those who become deaf later in later and those who become prelingually deaf before they acquire spoken language understanding. The former tend to rely on writing and lip reading and hearing aids if possible while the later might use sign language more often as their primary language. Many sign languages do not have a one on one correspondence with written language. Instead they have their own unique grammar and that grammar is different from many written languages. So those who rely on sign language do not necessarily find it easy to learn written language, especially if their primary language is sign language.
Oliver Sacs has a fascinating chapter about this in his book, Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf.
This is what I was thinking, too. My grandmother lost most of her hearing and about half her eyesight. I know she would have jumped at the chance to cure both conditions. I do know she missed her eyesight more Icould no longer sew or crochet) and given the option of choosing one, would likely have chosen to have her eyesight restored.
There was a story in a book by Oliver Sacks (later made into a bad movie with Val Kilmer) about a blind man whose sight was restored, but who experienced all kinds of problems as a result.
Vision is a complicated thing- in some ways, the eyes are the LEAST of it. The brain has to unscramble and make sense of all the images the eye takes in. And if the brain hasn’t done so in decades, its ability to interpret images may be severely damaged. If that happens, then newly restored vision can be a very disturbing thing. For instance, perceptions of distance, speed and proportion may be wildly off.
So, an airplane miles up in the sky may SEEM as if it’s only a few feet away. A car that’s a hundred yards away but headed slowly in your direction may LOOK as if it’s about to hit you. Frightening, eh?
But for purposes of the OP’s question, we’re assuming a magic pill can cure everything and give blind person perfect, flawless vision. If we make that dubious assumption, I’m sure very few blind people would say, “NO! I don’t want to see!”
On the other hand, we have a large number of deaf employees at my agency, and I often see some of them breaking each other up in American Sign Language. I can’t sign or understand signing, but I can see that SOMETHING valuable would be lost to them forever if they could hear, and had to communicate a whole new way (even if I believe that what they’d gain more than makes up for it).
When discussing blind people having their sight restored, it’s important to note that only 2% of blind people have been blind since birth and would experience the problems Dr. Sacks describes. So that would be some percentage of 2% who might reject the cure. From my work with the blind, I’m confident that almost all of them would want to see again.
Deafness is different, although the availability of cochlear implants has considerably eroded deaf culture, and large numbers of deaf people have chosen to take advantage of them.
I think in both cases, the response from people who had the sense long enough to train it will likely be quite different from those who never had it. The man Oliver Sacks wrote about had been born with congenital cataracts and never learned to see. When his sight was restored at something like age 54, he was lost. His visual cortex had long since been taken over by other senses. I read somewhere that the Braille reading finger takes over a large area of that cortex. And his visual cortex was untrainable in any case. I am quite certain that anyone who had sight and lost it would want it back, ASAP, no question.
The situation may be similar for the deaf. If you didn’t learn oral language as a child, it may be too late to acquire it as an adult. I know how hard and how poorly I have learned French despite having lived in a French speaking land for 45 years. Now if you get hearing back you still have your deaf community and can sign with them. One thing that might make a difference is whether you have learned to read a spoken language. As mentioned upthread, sign has a totally different grammar from frozen languages. For instance, motion of the hands is an important part of the grammar. So is facial expression, although that is also present in spoken language. Again, I would expect deaf people who had hearing early to want it back.
But not always. I once heard a radio interview with the deaf musician Evelyn Glennie. She said she started going deaf at age 8 and it was complete by age 12. She described how she had trained herself to “hear” through her arms by putting her arm up against a wall and having two notes played. At first they had to differ by a fifth until she heard the difference, but with more and more training she was eventually able to differentiate half tones. She played all sorts of percussion instruments, but even including ones, like vibraphones and bells, that produce tones. She plays barefoot to detect the orchestral accompaniment. It is an amazing performance, which I have seen twice. But anyway, at the end of the interview, she was asked if she would choose to have her hearing back if it were possible. She answered “No.” without hesitation, going on to explain that her entire professional persona was tied up with being a deaf musician.
A CI does not make a deaf person hearing any more then using a strap on makes a woman a man. The overwhelming majority of deaf from birth do not function like a hearing person with a CI…Not to mention “hearing” with a CI isn’t even CLOSE to what a hearing person hears. I’m SO sick of people bringing up CIs as a “threat” to being Deaf…CI kids function as hard of hearing…NOT hearing…hard of hearing isn’t deaf,but it’s not hearing either…Does a hearing aid make a deaf person hearing?No…then why does a CI. I have a friend who is a psychologist dealing with dhh children who were raised oral/mainstreamed.She’s been doing it for decades,even before CI was popular…She says the CI/oral kids of today are still dealing with the same issues that a severe-profound kid from the '80s who had powerful hearing aids did.
Even so, a CI is more than just a “powerful hearing aid”. In many cases it allows a higher level of sound perception than any hearing aid.
One interesting account I read was Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human by Michael Chorost. It’s a book by a man who had been hard of hearing all his life who eventually got a cochlear implant. It’s not all sunshine and roses, he does talk about the limitations and problems of a CI, but one thing that struck me (and him) was that he was able to hear better with CI than ever before in his life.
On the other hand, one of my internet acquaintances got a CI and it just flat out did not work - it did absolutely nothing to improve his hearing and, as he puts it, all the attempt did was “put a dent in the side of my head”.
I agree that in a sense the media oversells CI’s, and there is much misunderstanding about them, but someone for whom one works is not simply a deaf person with a hearing aid. They do allow perception of sound that is otherwise not possible. The important thing to remember is that while CI’s do, in fact, allow a deaf/hard of hearing person to hear it is NOT normal hearing. (Michael Chorost mentions this more than once in his book.)
A CI is not a “cure” for deafness any more than an artificial leg is a cure for amputation. Modern prosthetics allow a much higher level of functioning than in the past, but at the end of the day the technology comes off (or is turned off, or plugged into the wall for recharging) and the person is once more deaf or missing a limb or otherwise impaired. Most people with impairments are happy to utilize technology to compensate, but every once in awhile you find someone who has found an accommodation in a different manner, whether that be full immersion in the Deaf community or using a wheelchair instead of a C-leg. As long as the option is freely chosen and not coerced I’m OK with that.
Well said Broomstick.
Yes, a CI is more powerful then a HA…but the end results do seem to vary quite a bit in the pediatric population. Just as they did with HAs…(ie one kid can do well orally whereas another one could only hear enviromental sounds with it)…Not everyone with a CI is going to reach HOH listening levels…There are quite a few who do…but the cooking of the books on the stats of how well a kid can hear with CI,is horrendous.Did you know that for example at the oral “demonstration” schools (like CID,Clarke etc) they ask the lower performing students to leave so they can claim “oh they’re doing so well?” with the kids who graduate? Part of that is b/c there’s uncomfortable links between who pays the salary of the princepals of the oral schools.There are parents and therapy methods that claim that a kid can be just like a hearing kid,and not need stuff like deaf accomondations,or be superstars…Have a friend who attended a trade show for CIs,and she was told(by industry experts) that performance with CIs varies…there ARE great “hoh” functioning kids but the overwhelming majority still need traditional deaf accomondations…there are even kids who have very low speech perception and actucally still NEED ASL and to use 'terps
I think that the answer would probably be equal to the number zero.
It appears to me that blindness destroys self-sufficiency in a way that deafness does not. My impression is that there are more self-supporting professions open to totally deaf people than totally blind people; deaf people are more able to navigate new environments independently; deaf people are more able to maintain a household without outside help. Does anyone know if that impression is correct? If so, it seems to me that being blind would be a much more clear case of something being a disability, and a condition that people would be much more eager to move past. Dependency and poverty are not fun.
While deaf people can more easily navigate a new environment blind people can more easily enlist the aid of the non-disabled. As Helen Keller said, blindness cuts you off from things, deafness cuts you off from people.
As for which is more debilitating… I’ve met (and in two cases worked for) too many blind people to buy into the notion that the blind can’t take care of their households or earn a living. The two biggest obstacles are access to technology - which makes a huge difference for either disability - and the perceptions of other people. Blind people aren’t helpless but a lot of people think they are and treat them as if they are.
As someone mentioned up thread, Oliver Sacks wrote an essay about a man who gained sight as an adult, and his brain couldn’t learn to accommodate it. He started to walk around with his eyes closed, because the additional input was so incomprehensible as to be confusing and distracting. He actually navigated better when he was blind, either prior to the surgery or by closing his eyes after the surgery. That’s one of the problems with CI’s, too - even if the brain is receiving input it’s not much use if the brain is incapable of interpreting it.
So, unless your cure for blindness and deafness is capable not only of fixing malfunctioning eyes and ears but also when necessary rewiring the brain areas that interpret the input not everyone is going to find the cure useful, and some might find it worse than blindness and deafness.
I just wanted to add, because it’s a mundane pointless thing I must share, that I read a really lovely comment from a deaf parent about the joy of seeing their child make his first small words with his hands.
A joy that I think most parents would understand.