It is Barbaric. It is Inhumane. It is Child Abuse.
What is the probability that CI implant would work for a child? CI is not 100% guaranteed that a child would hear just like a hearing person would.
Ask yourself this. If you knew that the odds were that if you were asked to fly on a certain plane where there are 30% odds that the plane will crash at take off, en route during flight, or at your destination, will you get on that plane? At 30%, a substantial majority of people would say no thank you at the invitation to fly on that plane.
And yet there is a 30% probability that a CI implant would be successful and 70% of the time a failure?
How do you define a successful CI transplant?
Enough hearing to hear a jet?
Enough hearing to know that someone is talking?
Enough hearing that you can hear background noises?
Enough hearing to hear music?
Enough to understand speech?
That 30% probability needs to be defined further and terms of success needs to be spelled out.
I think that it is barbaric that parents would allow their child to have a CI transplant. It is a form of child abuse. Who speaks for the child? The child does not have enough life experience to tell you that a CI transplant works for them. Come on, a six month old baby?
Now who is more barbaric? A hearing person installing a CI transplant with a 30% or less chance of success and 70% or more chance of failure depending how a successful CI transplant is defined.
Or a deaf person who takes away their child’s hearing by surgery which has a 100% success rate and embraces the child to be included in their own community.
The truth is that most people - hearing or deaf - would agree that both approaches are destructive to the child, but who speaks for the child?
Barry Siebert
This comment is removed because “Enna” is not a real name and her email, me@tmail.com is a fake.
Comment by Enna — September 4, 2007 @ 7:22 pm
Well said, Barry. I have learned that AVT, AGB, and AGBAD are trying to abuse Deaf children by not allowing them to use ASL for communication and learning. They are violating First Amendment—Freedom of Speech. This is a very serious matter. Those groups are planting seeds to eradicate ASL. They are encouraging parents not to use ASL and force their children to have CI. ASL has already been recognized as true language. Yet they do not want Deaf chilren to use or learn ASL. Boy! we have been sleeping for a long time–too long and hope we will get more people to realize what they have been doing is wrong and we need to fight for those children and have a law to forbid children to get CI. We can do it but it is all up to us to fight for them. Readers, are you willing to join Barry to fight for Deaf children? Sign up below! I am signing it up now. Here it is: Penny S. Browning, California!
Comment by Penny — September 4, 2007 @ 7:23 pm
Signing it up: Kathleen K. Tripp, Michigan
Seriously, we need the facts, researches, studies of ci and infants. We need to find a way to present the evidences to protect ourselves.
Kathleen
Comment by anon — September 4, 2007 @ 8:10 pm
You are understandable upset about CI implants in children, but don’t you think it trivializes the acting out in anger towards children, and the sexual abuse that go into the word “Child Abuse”?
You are comparing parents who do what they can, with what they know to make their childs life better out of love, to those who mercilessly hit, attack, or neglect their children with no regard for their safety or well being?
Have you seen the difference between children who are loved and those who are mistreated? Please, continue to fight for education, but don’t compare ignorant loving actions with hateful, evil malicious ones.
Comment by Bill — September 5, 2007 @ 3:59 am
The percentages of success and failure are troublesome and should be looked at harder by parents considering CIs for their babies.
However, taking an extreme viewpoint that CI surgery is “child abuse” could turn off many people–not just anxious parents wanting their poor Deaf baby to hear again.
It can be called “ignorant loving action” (thanks, Bill!) which is fairly common through the ages of parenting. An extreme example of this is the Kennedy family, whose father Joseph chose to have his mildly mentally retarded daughter undergo a prefrontal lobotomy (brain surgery). The daughter, Rosemary Kennedy, became unable to talk or write, where she formerly kept a diary and participated in parties.
At the time prefrontal lobotomy was trendy surgery. Rosemary was a young adult, just learning to cope with her limitations while seeing others do more than she could. The doctors then were recommending the operation to control the young woman better, and Joseph agreed out of ignorance. Nowadays the operation is no longer done and there are thousands of mentally damaged people in institutions as a result of past surgery.
CI surgery is less radical and less damaging, with a limited success rate. That, to me, is not good enough while we have hearing aids.
Comment by Dianrez — September 5, 2007 @ 8:30 am
Barry,
I like how you present your arguments. That could help wake up people to realizing that CIs are not “miracle cures” as the CI companies want them to believe.
Unfortunately, because of the extreme “deficit thinking” that the “deafness” field is imposing on Deaf people and babies, the business of producing “better and better” hearing aids (cochlear implants included) will be very juicy economically and will not stop until there will be no longer people called “Deaf” (therefore Sign Language will go out of existence like many other languages under colonialism).
The bigger question is related to audism. Is it morally and biologically OK to try and eradicate Deaf people and Sign Language through machines and identity-altering education? if so, why? What have Deaf people done so wrong to warrant this?
Should our politics be aimed to “improve” the quality of our audistic aids or should they be aimed to reclaim our rightful place on earth AS WE ARE…independent of any machines, using our brains and other skills to create our niche on Earth and to contribute to the fabric of fascinating, humbling and loving diversity? Years and years of Deaf people doing just fine have proven that the machines for our ears are not that needed, are a waste of money and time, and the money and time are definitely better used for enhancing Deaf centric education and life as proven by thousands thousands thousands of Deaf people living and raising children just fine. If there are problems, they are not related to our being Deaf , BUT related to bad harmful misconceptions OTHERS have about us.
Anyway, I repeat, Barry, good line of thinking. I look forward to more like this.
Comment by Ella — September 5, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
Interesting. Barry, could you please site the source where 70% of implants fail. I could not find that stat anywhere. It would add strength to the argument.
Comment by Todd — September 5, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
I wonder that Cochlear Implant is extreme junk just as the computer, radio and so that has suddenly become garbage. Technology will change new material that will follow in time in the future.
I was very disgusted when I saw a toddler using two cochlear implants on the left ear and the right ear in the Vlog. What is that; CI toddler looked like a robot.
I haven’t see any babies with cochlear implants beginning to say “Mom†and “Dad†their language is compared to the common of hearing babies speaking “Mom†and Dad†as natural language. Did you find any information related to the topic of CI Babies using their voice to say “Mom†and “Dad� Even the Vlogger and blogger don’t have information.
The most common reason is that the hearing parents had desired to hear their deaf child speak “Mom†and “Dadâ€. In fact, Deaf people and hearing parents have differences in their feeling.
Comment by Floridagirl — September 5, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
(hearing parents want to hear)
Comment by Floridagirl — September 5, 2007 @ 4:15 pm