A Cure

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souggy said:
*facepalms*

Why is everything black and white to you? There's much more to life than hearing aids, ASL and cochlear implants.
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Well said.

For those of you who are looking for a 'cure':

Imagine a town full of deaf people where no one can hear anything. That town has been 'deaf' for generations. Everyone has adapted to life without hearing, and no one seems to be missing anything. People have ups & downs, people are born and die. Everyone has a job here and there, everyone lives life to the fullest.

That is, until a hearing person moves into town. This person suddenly finds that he cannot communicate with anyone in town since he does not know ASL. What does he do? He automatically assumes all the deaf residents are 'defective', and must be fixed, so he starts pushing for everyone to wear hearing aids, CI's, etc.

Then, more and more hearing people move into town. All the hearing people start making decisions over what is best for the deaf people without even asking them. Never mind that the deaf have been living for generations without issue. The deaf start feeling like they did something wrong, and are feeling shame. They also start wearing aids, CI's, etc, to make the hearing happy, but it is not enough.

All because hearing people see the deaf as 'defective', because they can hear and the deaf cannot.... they think the deaf cannot function without hearing, but what they do not notice is that the deaf are going about their business as usual, and not bothered by the fact that they cannot hear.

Over time, the deaf are alienated, placed in institutions, put on government assistance, and told that they cannot work, are mocked endlessly, and treated as a burden on society.

Sounds familiar? It should, since humans have been doing that to each other for millennia.

The hearing will always look on the deaf as "broken" and will always try to find a cure. Deafness is not like cancer; it does not kill people.
 
green427 said:
Well said.

For those of you who are looking for a 'cure':

Imagine a town full of deaf people where no one can hear anything. That town has been 'deaf' for generations. Everyone has adapted to life without hearing, and no one seems to be missing anything. People have ups & downs, people are born and die. Everyone has a job here and there, everyone lives life to the fullest.

That is, until a hearing person moves into town. This person suddenly finds that he cannot communicate with anyone in town since he does not know ASL. What does he do? He automatically assumes all the deaf residents are 'defective', and must be fixed, so he starts pushing for everyone to wear hearing aids, CI's, etc.

Then, more and more hearing people move into town. All the hearing people start making decisions over what is best for the deaf people without even asking them. Never mind that the deaf have been living for generations without issue. The deaf start feeling like they did something wrong, and are feeling shame. They also start wearing aids, CI's, etc, to make the hearing happy, but it is not enough.

All because hearing people see the deaf as 'defective', because they can hear and the deaf cannot.... they think the deaf cannot function without hearing, but what they do not notice is that the deaf are going about their business as usual, and not bothered by the fact that they cannot hear.

Over time, the deaf are alienated, placed in institutions, put on government assistance, and told that they cannot work, are mocked endlessly, and treated as a burden on society.

Sounds familiar? It should, since humans have been doing that to each other for millennia.

The hearing will always look on the deaf as "broken" and will always try to find a cure. Deafness is not like cancer; it does not kill people.
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Good point. I'm not disease either! Ugh... :|
 
As for the stated purpose of one's life- a philosophical proposition. One can hypothesize a world being entirely-deaf/blind -whatever. An interesting constriction of one's imagination.To what end?
Reality -now- very different.
As for how the "deaf" have been "treated in the past" is a very different question as the potential ways of reacting to having the "sense of hearing-or lack thereof"-individually. Vision /taste/touch etc should be considered as well.
A "cure of deafness" will lead to what-hearing?

Implanted Advanced Bionics-Harmony activated
 
But, again, there are a number of us who do not feel we need to be "cured". Some people may want it, just like some people want HA's or CI's. There are quite a few who use ASL/PSE/SEE or whatever. There are others who have limited knowledge of ASL and read lips or rely on notes or such. Most late-deafened people will try for amplification, but there are quite a few who don't. I am like quite a few who does not need to be "cured". I am total deaf. No amplification will help me. Due to the nature of what caused my deafness, I don't even think the "stem cell cure" if it ever came about would help. Therefore, I rely on speech/reading lips, notes and slowly learning ASL/PSE.
 
Actually, there was such a place green427 is talking about. There, all hearing folks signed just like the deaf majority did.....
 
We're assuming that there's going to be a universal cure for disabilites.
Like what works for adults, will work for kids.
Not quite. The percentage of kids who are disabled (and who were born that way) make up a very small percentage of total disabilites overall.Most disabilites were AQUIRRED in adulthood.
Say for example, you have someone who was blinded by a disease in adulthood after being sighted for most of their life. Say there was a cure for the disease.
Then take a kid who was born or early blinded. They may not be able to respond well the same way an adult would......Remmy the movie/case study At First Sight ? (which was based on an Oliver Sacks case study?)
 
deafdyke said:
We're assuming that there's going to be a universal cure for disabilites.
Like what works for adults, will work for kids.
Not quite. The percentage of kids who are disabled (and who were born that way) make up a very small percentage of total disabilites overall.Most disabilites were AQUIRRED in adulthood.
Say for example, you have someone who was blinded by a disease in adulthood after being sighted for most of their life. Say there was a cure for the disease.
Then take a kid who was born or early blinded. They may not be able to respond well the same way an adult would......Remmy the movie/case study At First Sight ? (which was based on an Oliver Sacks case study?)
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I'm not entirely sure this is true, Deafdyke. Do you have any sources to back this up?

For instance, I know that spina bifida occurs in 1:1000 live births. That's a heck of a lot of people with SB. I don't know what the stats are for cerebral palsy, but, it's pretty common as well.

What I'm saying is, your statement isn't entirely accurate when you consider all the congenital and genetic defects that can cause a physical disability to occur. On top of that, there's also mixed disabilities. Those people who were born with mental AND physical disabilities. There's also prematurity that brings with it it's own set of disability across the spectrum.

However, I do agree with you that you shouldn't look to an universal cure for these things. There won't be one. I know that they are doing fetal surgery to mitigate the damage done by spina bifida, but, that's not a cure. The child still has issues once born, so the word "cure" is a pretty slippery slope. It's progress, but that's about it.
 
your statement isn't entirely accurate when you consider all the congenital and genetic defects that can cause a physical disability to occur. On top of that, there's also mixed disabilities. Those people who were born with mental AND physical disabilities. There's also prematurity that brings with it it's own set of disability across the spectrum.
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Oceanbreeze, there are a lot of congenital and genetic issues that cause PDs yes.
But when you look at the WHOLE disabilty population, childhood disabilites rank as a small percentage. Like you go over to New Mobilty (messageboard for wheelchair users) and most people there are SCI (spinal cord injuiry)
It's like the way most dhh people are late deafened, with only about 10% of the dhh population being early/born deaf. (and even with the pediatric population, most kids lose their hearing as babies)
 
deafdyke said:
Oceanbreeze, there are a lot of congenital and genetic issues that cause PDs yes.
But when you look at the WHOLE disabilty population, childhood disabilites rank as a small percentage. Like you go over to New Mobilty (messageboard for wheelchair users) and most people there are SCI (spinal cord injuiry)
It's like the way most dhh people are late deafened, with only about 10% of the dhh population being early/born deaf. (and even with the pediatric population, most kids lose their hearing as babies)
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I still would like to see stats to back this up. You can't judge a population by a message board, DD.
 
As noted before having a Cochlear Implant DOESN'T CURE DEAFNESS! Real easy to prove disconnect the Implant-real quiet-- Deafness! At least MY experience-every time I go swimming.

Implanted Advanced Bionics-Harmony activated Aug/07
 
How easy is it to learn ASL? It might come in handy for me one day. I have never learned it, not even the ABC's. I'd rather learn Spanish as it's common language around here in California and I plan to take a class for it next year...
 
Mudkipz said:
How easy is it to learn ASL? It might come in handy for me one day. I have never learned it, not even the ABC's. I'd rather learn Spanish as it's common language around here in California and I plan to take a class for it next year...
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Not that hard. Spanish and ASL has the same grammar structure.
 
Oceanbreeze said:
I still would like to see stats to back this up. You can't judge a population by a message board, DD.
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She's correct. Deaf community: 36 million in the USA has hearing loss, 4.5million of these are under the age of 65.

I have all sorts of links on the computer I dont use anymore.
 
posts from hell said:
She's correct. Deaf community: 36 million in the USA has hearing loss, 4.5million of these are under the age of 65.

I have all sorts of links on the computer I dont use anymore.
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In that post, PFH, we weren't discussing hearing loss as a single entity. We were discussing disabilities as a whole (or I was).

I would tend to agree with you regarding the hearing loss stats, though. I would never question that from anybody; as I'm not versed enough to do so. :)
 
"Deaf community is 36 million"- How many of this total actually USE ASL?

Implanted Advanced Bionics-Harmony activated Aug/07
 
Wirelessly posted

posts from hell said:
Mudkipz said:
How easy is it to learn ASL? It might come in handy for me one day. I have never learned it, not even the ABC's. I'd rather learn Spanish as it's common language around here in California and I plan to take a class for it next year...
Click to expand...

Not that hard. Spanish and ASL has the same grammar structure.
Click to expand...

But the mouth morphemes, facial expressions and classifiers place it closer in resemblance to Mandarin. In term of complexity, that is.
 
Wirelessly posted

drphil said:
"Deaf community is 36 million"- How many of this total actually USE ASL?

Implanted Advanced Bionics-Harmony activated Aug/07
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You're showing more and more of either your lack of literacy skills, or your jaded selective reading.

Estimate is between 500,000 to a million, but we wouldn't know because Census doesn't ask people what their languages are.
 
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