If a person wishes to not get a certain treatment - fine, that's their right. But when one starts trying to keep others down, that's not ok.
Those two things mean different things to me. Obviously deaf people cannot hear. Not able. Dis-able. Deafness is a disability.
But not all disabilities are generally disabling of individuals. The only disability that deafness causes is a lack of perception of sound.
Hearing people have a panoply of inferences about what that means -- about how it disables and how broadly it disables. And most of them are faulty. It doesn't result in isolation, in particular, in a deaf cultural context. In fact in the deaf cultural context about the only thing missing is some auditory alerts that would be nice as a visual complement, and some aspects of music and the like. Yes. Birds chirping is beautiful. I miss it deeply. It'd be nice to have a world where every kid gets to experience that.
But all of the social and emotional and cognitive consequences imagined of deafness, are not innate to the lack of hearing.
Or should a fish be able to breathe without water?
In both cases there are ways to function without fundamentally altering the body, and neither is wrong.
It is not so clear that there is "abuse", when there is an empathetic standard of living.
Now to me, the best argument for taking this is that deaf people do have ears, whether or not they function. So it is reasonable for them to experience sound, but also, they have a right not to, if they so choose.
What I think is harder, if you have experienced neither, to be able to make that decision well. And nobody is talking yet about reversing such a therapy...
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but are you basically saying that there's no real negative aspects inherent to being deaf, outside of those imposed by society?
Animals that can hear extremely well (owls for instance) rely on this trait to be able to survive.
It's always been more important to us to be able to see versus hear things, we evolved our large brains to take advantage of symbols and information. You can hear a symbol but it requires relatively a lot of energy to relay that over any long distance. In contrast, a smoke signal is visible for many many miles.
Things that are seen tend to be more durable, too. A scream lasts for only an instant, but the signs of a scuffle may last for days or weeks. A carving in stone can last for hundreds of years... and many of the things we eat can be seen but not heard (well).
So it is a far bigger deal to us to be blind than to lack any of the other senses.
This is a valid question. My gripe is people aren't asking the obvious other questions:
1. What are the positive aspects of deafness?
2. What are the different aspects of deafness (neither positive nor negative, but leads to a very different human experience).
If either of these significantly outnumber the negative aspects, I can see why imposing a treatment on children without the parent's consent is problematic.
Many people here self-diagnose as Asperger's. Can you not see why they would not want a "cure"?
Being an extrovert objectively gives you great advantages in (most) societies. As an introverted parent, I would definitely fight any "cure" for my introverted children.
Furthermore, if both parents are deaf and the kid is not deaf, there's a good chance that in the first so many years of life, the kid will have poorer mental development than the deaf kid. Not quite the same, but an example: Deaf kids born to deaf parents hit the same language milestones as hearing kids born to hearing parents. But deaf kids born to hearing parents do worse, because the parents don't know the appropriate way of thinking/communicating.
Related: Deaf kids who were given cochlear implants, but no sign language training fared a lot worse than both hearing kids and deaf kids who learned sign language.
I'd still be cautious because there's the long-running tendency for any kind of 'cure' for anything inheritable to be used as a eugenics bludgeon, but that's about society rather than the direct effects.
In this case, the lack of a specific physical ability results in that person's brain working differently.
I have congenital hearing loss in both ears, and wear hearing aids. I don't know ASL (at least not well enough to use), as I am more or less able to function with hearing aids, with the usual caveats - background noise, group settings, still quite reliant on lip-reading and context to fill in gaps etc.
Within my financial means, I would glad pay to wave a magic wand and restore my ears to "normal". This gene therapy sounds interesting, but I'm not sure if that mutation is the cause of my hearing loss. And I'm always wary of side-effects, haha.
I do see my hearing loss as a disability - and no matter how much you try to dress it up, or with "don't diss my dis-ability" PR campaigns - it still does suck every day. I'm not saying you should discriminate against people for their disability - and I've steadfastly advocated for increased accessibility to level the playing field (e.g. in my workplace, at church, in the community). But I'm not exactly Matt Murdoch or Echo here.
And yes, I'm also "neuro-diverse" (starts with A) - and yes, I guess you could argue there's advantages there, under specific circumstances. But there's most definitely a penalty there.
It's not a clear cut easy decision. I would say one should understand and respect the parents' decision. They know the factors way better than I do, and likely in many ways better than you do (especially as you don't know ASL).
I work with a deaf person (not born that way, but been that way most of her life). I'm sure she'd pay a hefty sum to get normal hearing - partially because her whole family (kids, etc) are not deaf. Even when she openly talks about the advantages of being deaf. If she did have a deaf child and chose treatment for her kid, I'd totally understand. But if she chose against it, I'd also totally understand.
What I don't get is people insisting they are totally wrong/evil for not pursuing the treatment for their kids. Almost always they don't understand the factors at play.
You'd have the same issue, if not more, with background noise, group settings and context acquisition
Processing input is the hard part, if you're already having issues, that isn't going to go away
The original commenter wanted to state that deafness can and should be seen as a natural occurrence, instead of a disability, that pushes people to better use other faculties. In the computer analogy, it would be someone who protests the use of computers entirely like for school children, to push them to use other skills.
I have a specific “disability” that I often cannot smell (because of allergies). I have learned to “feel” smell with my fingers running through the air. In such a situation, am I really disabled? Despite how important smell can be especially with spoiled foods? Few would think so. This deaf commenter sees his deafness in the same manner. And sees efforts to broaden people’s senses in the same manner as children being given calculators and computers at an early age.
