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The cochlear implant question

aeon.co

91–100 of 158 posts

Re: The cochlear implant question

#91

Saying this as someone who is hearing but close to the deaf community in college and knows ASL. By trying to give her the best of both worlds she is going to diminish both worlds. Not fully in the deaf community and not fully in the hearing community.

Have you met the undergrads at Gallaudet University? They live in both worlds.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#92

As the hearing brother of a deaf sister with hearing parents, what I usually tell people is to learn sign language and get the cochlear. Forcing only cochlear on the child means that the family does not live in the deaf world with their child, while only speaking SL might distance them and cause them to miss out on a lot in the hearing world. It reminds me of basque spain, where everyone speaks catalan and some peopl…

edit: castellano not catalan

Re: The cochlear implant question

#93
"Botticellian baby"[1] "Many perfections". "I had a stubborn sense that her deafness was not a pit she had fallen into, but just one of many extraordinary discoveries about her that I was making every day." This is coming across as denial.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Botticelli_04_Louvre.jpg

Re: The cochlear implant question

#94
post #47

I feel like the narrative around disabled people has advanced to the point where some now insist that they aren't disabled. In reality, it's a pretty objective fact that being disabled means being unable to do something. It is a net negative on someone's quality of life. I'd be jolly pissed off if my parent decided not to get me an implant that enabled me to hear just because someone had told them that being deaf was…

Not being able to hear "normally" sucks. I only developed hearing loss later in life but it's bad enough not hearing everything, sometimes just nodding along when I don't hear something because I already asked a hundred times that day and feel embarrassed about it. Not being talked to by others because they feel like you don't understand them. It's a huge disadvantage in terms of mental health and socializing. Imagin…

I was born with some hearing challenges, nothing too bad.. enough for the hearing test in elementary school to flag it and to suggest I don't sit in the back of the class, but thats about it. As i've aged I've noticed more issues. Hearing in louder spaces can be challenging, etc. What I would consider fairly normal age-based hearing loss, coupled with a bit of a hearing issue from birth and probably bolstered by a youth spent going to a lot of concerts and clubs.

My father has hearing aids and has had them since he was probably in his mid 60s, I'm just pushing 50....

...but to my point, Apple recently released their 'kinda hearing aid' tech (from what I can tell just a custom EQ and passthrough for the mics in the airpods).. and man it's fucking great. I'm probably not ready yet for 'real hearing aids' and they are so fucking expensive to boot.. but having this 'half measure' has been really useful for me.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#95
post #59

My wife and I faced a similar situation and found it a simple decision. We both carry GJB-2 gene mutations that will likely result in profound non-syndromic hearing loss. We went through Orchid Health to get a whole genome sequence of our prospective embryos and then selected one that was not affected by the condition. We have 1 more carrier girl and 2 more unaffected girls to work with, and if we want boys later in…

How much money do things like this end up costing?

In the US, a full round of IVF plus transfer will be around 20k on the low end, up to maybe 40k on the high end, including all medication required if paid for fully out of pocket. Genome sequencing costs a few k per embryo.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#96
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a study of people in their 70s. The vast majority of people with hearing loss in their 70s lost it late in life; they have no Deaf/HH community, they almost never learn to sign, and they often struggle to adjust for their loss of hearing. The study you linked talks about reduced stimulation, and in particular _social_ stimulation: > when an individual suffers from moderate to severe hearing loss, they are les…

I 100% agree with the line you quote and refute in your reply, which I've repeated below... > when an individual suffers from moderate to severe hearing loss, they are less likely to participate in social activities. Perhaps they are embarrassed about their hearing loss. Or they may simply find it unrewarding to attend a social event when they cannot hear what is going on. This has been my life experience since the l…

The local community college used to show lectures for certain classes on the cable TV. They had lectures on “Deaf Culture”. The lecturer would use the word “hearies” and generally made a good case for the existence of deaf culture. I am a “heary” and I found these lectures eye-opening.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#97
post #47

I feel like the narrative around disabled people has advanced to the point where some now insist that they aren't disabled. In reality, it's a pretty objective fact that being disabled means being unable to do something. It is a net negative on someone's quality of life. I'd be jolly pissed off if my parent decided not to get me an implant that enabled me to hear just because someone had told them that being deaf was…

> being deaf was actually the same as being able to hear. That's not even close to the argument being presented. The fundamental crisis within the deaf community is around the fact that deaf people share a common language . This is very different than most other disabled communities. Language is fundamental to shared culture. To be clear, I'm not saying that deaf children should not be given cochlear implants, but th…

Cultures come and go, arising from circumstances that can change. Does preservation of a living culture take priority over the wellbeing of its members? Perhaps a culture is something that can be decommissioned humanely.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#98
I'm "almost" a lifelong user of a cochlear implant. I got my first one when I was 9. Before I got it, I was communicating through lip reading and speaking, I never knew sign language. Lip reading I still use relatively often -- when I'm at a crowded restaurant, or at an unbearably noisy party, and there's many interlocutors at the table, I persistently stare at their lips. They take me for a great listener, when in fact, I can't hear shit, and I'm desperately switching back and forth between people's mouths to catch what they're saying. I'm out of shape and this takes so much of my brain power to understand people that I often cannot contribute my thoughts.

Though my cochlear isn't perfect, I would never think of not getting it. In fact, I'd probably be rather angry at my parents for not helping me get one as soon as it was possible. During my childhood and up until late college, I've only ever met one person who was so severely hard of hearing and was about my age, and that was where I have been getting my speech lessons before I got my first cochlear implant.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#99
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being deaf was actually the same as being able to hear. That's not even close to the argument being presented. The fundamental crisis within the deaf community is around the fact that deaf people share a common language . This is very different than most other disabled communities. Language is fundamental to shared culture. To be clear, I'm not saying that deaf children should not be given cochlear implants, but th…

Cultures come and go, arising from circumstances that can change. Does preservation of a living culture take priority over the wellbeing of its members? Perhaps a culture is something that can be decommissioned humanely.

> Does preservation of a living culture take priority over the wellbeing of its members? Perhaps a culture is something that can be decommissioned humanely.

This is problematic. Who, but the members of a living culture, can determine any of these questions? My understanding is that most cultures are self-preserving, until they aren't, usually through conquest or other external forms of eradication.

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