Bionic ears threaten deaf culture

Metro.co.uk

Bionic ears 'threaten deaf culture'Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Deaf activists have claimed their 'culture' is under threat from hi-tech ear implants which promise to help their babies' speech and language skills.

Cochlear implants, if inserted in a baby's first year of life, can allow the child to develop 'normal' language skills at least up to the age of four.

But some deaf parents argue there is nothing wrong with a deaf child that requires surgery, and say the implants represent 'genocide to the deaf'.

The implant is a surgically implanted electronic device that can help provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing.

Often referred to as a bionic ear, the implant does not amplify sound, but works by directly stimulating functioning auditory nerves inside the cochlea with electrical impulses.
Eleven children who received implants before the age of one developed language normally, a team at the University of Melbourne found.

'The children don't have normal hearing, but they have normal language,' a team member said.
But some members of the deaf community argue the implants are unethical.
Harlan Lane, a psycholinguist at Northeastern University in Boston said: 'The idea of operating on a healthy baby makes us all recoil.

'Deaf people argue they use a different language and with it comes a different culture, but there is certainly nothing wrong with them that needs fixing with a surgeon's scalpel.'


One of comments that I like..

I'm a Deaf Studies student at Bristol university, and we've been covering this precise topic in our discussions and seminars recently. We are a majority hearing class, and yet we all agree that deafness is certainly not a disability, it's just a difference, and that the deaf child should not have their culture and life taken away from them without a choice. Also, the implants do not mean that the child will fit into the "normal" hearing culture, and they will not fully belong to the Deaf culture, which means that they threaten the child's chances of understanding themselves, and leading a normal, healthy and happy life. (Laura Blake, Bath, UK)


See, see!

I noticed a team member who said that line "The children don't have normal hearing, but they have normal language". Is that how crappy team see this sign language as a not normal language? For me, British Sign Language is normal rather than Deaf impaired's first spoken language English.