Just a thought about the CI debate, perhaps the debate itself is wrong. Please allow me to elaborate, the debate is if a CI is a cure or not (it never may haver intended to be). When CIs were first developed they were just an expirement to see if electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve would give the profoundly deaf access to sound (which was proven to be true to varying degrees). It was only when corporations got hold of technology especially corporate america) did the word cure come into the conversation(so CIs could be marketed to make corporations some money). Just a thought.
The debate may be wrong
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john57
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The multiple-channel Cochlear Implant was invented by Graeme Clark and he was motivated by his father’s struggle with deafness to find a way to help him and others. Graeme Clark did alot of research in this area and had his own Cochlear Implant Clinic you can check out his Bio for more details . It should be said that Graeme Clark was born in Australia and Cohlear is a corporate Australia company as well.
sr171soars
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No, I never thought it was a "cure".
It was just a means or tool by which I could hear enough again. That is continuing to participate in hearing society in a manner I was accustomed to in the past with a HA. Did it do that? Yes, and a whole lot more.
At the end of the day, I'll take it off and I'm still deaf...thus not a "cure" in that sense.
It was just a means or tool by which I could hear enough again. That is continuing to participate in hearing society in a manner I was accustomed to in the past with a HA. Did it do that? Yes, and a whole lot more.
At the end of the day, I'll take it off and I'm still deaf...thus not a "cure" in that sense.
Good Point
I stand corrected, but after some of the recent corporate history in American & being a victim of the joke of health system we have (I have type 1 diabetes as well as progessive hearing loss & would not have my new aids except for a state program, co pays from the diabetic treatments are a nightmare)You can see why I have no trust in corporations. P.S. I do have decent employer sponsored heath insurane(my employer is being taken for a ride too).
I stand corrected, but after some of the recent corporate history in American & being a victim of the joke of health system we have (I have type 1 diabetes as well as progessive hearing loss & would not have my new aids except for a state program, co pays from the diabetic treatments are a nightmare)You can see why I have no trust in corporations. P.S. I do have decent employer sponsored heath insurane(my employer is being taken for a ride too).
I KNOW!!!! Corparations are beyond greedy. That is why you have all the positive PR abt the CI, CI CI! They want to sell it....they want to make a profit off of it.
Granted its less bad then in the past. I remember back in the early mid 90's it made it sound like you could hear normally with CI. Now it's more moderated....but you still get "infocomerical style" raving abt CI!
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Count Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) did the first experiment to see if electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve would make deaf hear.
He stuck two metal rods in his ear canals and ran electricity through. It worked. He heard a loud booming.
So they knew it would do that long before CI was developed.
john57
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More history
In 1957 Djourno and Eyries placed wires on nerves exposed during an operation and reported the first in-depth description of effects on a deaf person that heard sounds like "a roulette wheel" and "a cricket" They were hampered at the time for good microsurgical techniques.
During the 1970's there were questions on safety and who should be implanted.
I should state that Graeme Clark of Australia was not the only one that was trying to develop a usable multi-channel cochlear implant there were; William House in Los Angeles and I personally known of one person that had the House cochlear implant; F. Blair Simmons and Robert White at Stanford University;Donald Eddington at the University of Utah;Michael Merzenick in San Francisco and and Adam Kissiah at Cape Kennedy, Florida. Adam Kissiah with the help of NASA had a patent on the what the model of the Cochlear implant should look like in 1977. He was driven by the lost of his own hearing to develop this and his model and ideas are still being used today.
Graeme Clark, the Australian who successfully implanted the first "bionic ear" in 1978 and Clark conducted the first successful implant operation on a child in 1985. I have known many people throughout the years with Cochlear implants and the quality has steady been improved.
In 1957 Djourno and Eyries placed wires on nerves exposed during an operation and reported the first in-depth description of effects on a deaf person that heard sounds like "a roulette wheel" and "a cricket" They were hampered at the time for good microsurgical techniques.
During the 1970's there were questions on safety and who should be implanted.
I should state that Graeme Clark of Australia was not the only one that was trying to develop a usable multi-channel cochlear implant there were; William House in Los Angeles and I personally known of one person that had the House cochlear implant; F. Blair Simmons and Robert White at Stanford University;Donald Eddington at the University of Utah;Michael Merzenick in San Francisco and and Adam Kissiah at Cape Kennedy, Florida. Adam Kissiah with the help of NASA had a patent on the what the model of the Cochlear implant should look like in 1977. He was driven by the lost of his own hearing to develop this and his model and ideas are still being used today.
Graeme Clark, the Australian who successfully implanted the first "bionic ear" in 1978 and Clark conducted the first successful implant operation on a child in 1985. I have known many people throughout the years with Cochlear implants and the quality has steady been improved.
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IMHO, any kind of health care provider never wants to discuss the failure rate of any procedure or product. I've asked the question "what is the failure rate?" I never get a straight answer. Apparently, it's heresy.
I don't know what would be considered failure with a CI. Maybe it depends on the expectations of the patient. A patient should be fully informed about the risks and limitations of CI. I'm afraid that's not happening.
I don't know what would be considered failure with a CI. Maybe it depends on the expectations of the patient. A patient should be fully informed about the risks and limitations of CI. I'm afraid that's not happening.
Agreed. It still peeves me off when people think CI will give them normal hearing. It also peeves me off how lax candidacy requirements are. Some have so much residual hearing that I wish I had their hearing but will have to wait for stem cells to achieve this.
Well, corporations and profit is behind any significant progress, in any field.
For sure the hype about CI has been pushed by the corp. and the healt systems such as the american one are prone to be influenced by that. Nevertheless, great profit is also behind HA market and it is not rare to read or listen to hentusiastic promises about a new HA model by the mother companies. It makes less hype simply because HA is a well established technology, very well known and accepted, with 50/60 years of history, that has evolved significantly, but probably is very close to its limit.
CI is a relatively new concept, it has several advantages over HA, but of course some limits and associated risks as well. The hype is due to the possibility to give hearing to totally deaf, or severely hearing impaired people. I really think it is justified. All the other aspects of this hype are pure commercial, but nothing that can hamper people to get informed.
In Italy where we have a free health system (well, we pay taxes for it, but anybody is assisted for free, then), but there is a similar "hype", also if no private companies have a role, everything is public.
CI has reached such technological level because the corporations invested in research and got profit from that. Tha same is true for HA, too! And the same is true for the most of drugs, medical equipment, diagnostic tools, etc. And this is also why some very rare and terrible illnesses still have no cure. Because there is no possibility to get a profit from the investments in research. It's the market economy.
In summary, I strongly believe that the hype is a small price to be paid if we can have such technological progresses. This won't be possible without the job of the private corporations. At the end it is still possible to get information and translate the commercial communication into real perspectives, expectations, hopes.
Obviously this is not a justification for MDs not able (or they do not want to?) to give a complete and correct information.
For sure the hype about CI has been pushed by the corp. and the healt systems such as the american one are prone to be influenced by that. Nevertheless, great profit is also behind HA market and it is not rare to read or listen to hentusiastic promises about a new HA model by the mother companies. It makes less hype simply because HA is a well established technology, very well known and accepted, with 50/60 years of history, that has evolved significantly, but probably is very close to its limit.
CI is a relatively new concept, it has several advantages over HA, but of course some limits and associated risks as well. The hype is due to the possibility to give hearing to totally deaf, or severely hearing impaired people. I really think it is justified. All the other aspects of this hype are pure commercial, but nothing that can hamper people to get informed.
In Italy where we have a free health system (well, we pay taxes for it, but anybody is assisted for free, then), but there is a similar "hype", also if no private companies have a role, everything is public.
CI has reached such technological level because the corporations invested in research and got profit from that. Tha same is true for HA, too! And the same is true for the most of drugs, medical equipment, diagnostic tools, etc. And this is also why some very rare and terrible illnesses still have no cure. Because there is no possibility to get a profit from the investments in research. It's the market economy.
In summary, I strongly believe that the hype is a small price to be paid if we can have such technological progresses. This won't be possible without the job of the private corporations. At the end it is still possible to get information and translate the commercial communication into real perspectives, expectations, hopes.
Obviously this is not a justification for MDs not able (or they do not want to?) to give a complete and correct information.
john57
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ref74
I agree to many things that you said. In my 20's I was a bit disappointed that hearing aids manufactures did all their research in mid power aids and added all new features to mid power aids and did not have the time or money to copy those improvements to the Ultra high power aids. I waited a long time to have better sweat resistance aids and that is not rocket science to began with. Now the high power aids have parity with all the other aids. It seems I waited forever for this to happen. It seems at times medical science moves very slowly. :roll:
I agree to many things that you said. In my 20's I was a bit disappointed that hearing aids manufactures did all their research in mid power aids and added all new features to mid power aids and did not have the time or money to copy those improvements to the Ultra high power aids. I waited a long time to have better sweat resistance aids and that is not rocket science to began with. Now the high power aids have parity with all the other aids. It seems I waited forever for this to happen. It seems at times medical science moves very slowly. :roll:
Unfortunately the bad thing of relying on the research of the private companies is that everything is evaluated in the perspective of the final profit. Before investing 1 buck in research, a corporation makes sure that there will be 10 or 100 bucks back from the sales of the new product/technology. The result of that is great and fast advances in some aspects, very slow in others. Here is where the public research can have a role, but unfortunately the funding a public institution can get are several order of magnitude lower than those of corporation, because there is no profit at the end. Moreover, the potential of a public research institution is much lower than that of the big corporation, in terms of facilities, instrumentation, expertises (expert scientists can cost a lot!!), effectiveness, organization, etc. This does not accelerate the results and there are often big problems in the technology transfer. Sometimes good new technological solutions are available, but no corporation invest money in it, because they do not know it exists, or simply because managerial decisions sometimes take ages and the technology does not become a product.
There are some exceptions, but usually when funding from private corporations goes to the public research institution. Obviously this won't make any change to the situation.
Anyway, there are some cases when medical science moves really slow because it is very difficult to solve a given problem. Things sometimes are very complex.
There are some exceptions, but usually when funding from private corporations goes to the public research institution. Obviously this won't make any change to the situation.
Anyway, there are some cases when medical science moves really slow because it is very difficult to solve a given problem. Things sometimes are very complex.
rick48
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Having been around the ci community for over 20 years, I think that the "ci as a cure" label is unfairly applied to the ci professionals and ci manufacturers.
While I am certain that if you search the internet you will find some reference somewhere by someone who called the ci a cure for deafness but a fair and balanced review of what has been said over the last two decades by ci professionals and the ci corporations will overwhelmingly show that the ci is not being called a cure for deafness either directly or indirectly. I think the more accurate position taken is that it is the best technology that exists to allow access to sound and ultimately speech.
I am not certain why there is a need to perpetuate a "debate" regarding the ci. It has been around for over a quarter of a century and is not going away, its effectiveness is no longer an issue, more deaf people are getting cis and it still remains an option for deaf adults and the parents of deaf children.
While I am certain that if you search the internet you will find some reference somewhere by someone who called the ci a cure for deafness but a fair and balanced review of what has been said over the last two decades by ci professionals and the ci corporations will overwhelmingly show that the ci is not being called a cure for deafness either directly or indirectly. I think the more accurate position taken is that it is the best technology that exists to allow access to sound and ultimately speech.
I am not certain why there is a need to perpetuate a "debate" regarding the ci. It has been around for over a quarter of a century and is not going away, its effectiveness is no longer an issue, more deaf people are getting cis and it still remains an option for deaf adults and the parents of deaf children.
somedeafdudefromPNW
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Rick, it largely have to do with the educators and a few audiologists-- not so much the CI companies themselves.
Educators love to push things on people as if they are miracle cures: ritalin, audio-tapes, CIs to name a few for people with attention deficit disorders, sight loss and deaf or hard-of-hearing. And yes I have these pushed upon me. I know what they said, and what came out of their mouths. They promote them as if they are absolute fix that can make you perfectly normal again. They still do this to kids, no matter what problem they may have. I don't know why educators word things as such, but they do.
"Don't worry, once you can hear-- you don't have to read. You can just listen to audio-tapes."
"You don't need to learn how to read, there are audio-tapes."
"Ritalin will make you normal and be a good worker."
"CIs will make you normal, just like everyone else."
See how they word these things to little kids?
Educators love to push things on people as if they are miracle cures: ritalin, audio-tapes, CIs to name a few for people with attention deficit disorders, sight loss and deaf or hard-of-hearing. And yes I have these pushed upon me. I know what they said, and what came out of their mouths. They promote them as if they are absolute fix that can make you perfectly normal again. They still do this to kids, no matter what problem they may have. I don't know why educators word things as such, but they do.
"Don't worry, once you can hear-- you don't have to read. You can just listen to audio-tapes."
"You don't need to learn how to read, there are audio-tapes."
"Ritalin will make you normal and be a good worker."
"CIs will make you normal, just like everyone else."
See how they word these things to little kids?