Deaf couples choosing deaf babies is sick
Dear Department of Health,
Surprise surprise, the government panders to the wish of yet another pressure group in their desperation not to upset any more voters. Your spectacular u-turn on allowing deaf parents to select embryos for deaf children is not only weak, it represents a shocking attack on humanity and common sense.
A few days ago, I caused quite a stir with a post about lesbian parents. My argument centred around the fact that society has a duty to do everything it can to give children the best start in life, and while this doesn’t mean cutting out lesbian and gay parents from society, it does mean do everything we can to support traditional families and the same logic applies here. To let deaf parents deliberately inflict a disability on a child would be the a disgusting practice. Apparently you are covertly letting this through Parliament by ensuring that deafness is not treated as a ’serious condition’. You seem to think that the ability to create disabled children gives deaf parents ‘equal rights’ with hearing parents?! And what about the rights of the children, eh? What about the right of children to grow up and participate as fully as possible in society? What right do you or parents have to deliberately rob children of one of the most basic human senses?
Apparently “being deaf is not about being disabled. It’s about being part of a linguistic minority. We’re proud of the language we use and the community we live in”, which is outrageously self-centred. It is appallingly selfish to let a parent physically handicap a child just so that they can feel a bit closer to them and make them ’part of their community’. What about letting the child be part of the wider community instead? The rights of the child are the only issue here, and to ignore them in this way is abhorrent.
In disgust,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
[...] Deaf Couples Choosing Deaf Babies Is Sick A So Called Thinker, whose political leanings are centre-right. [...]
Spot on buddy!!
Hmmm some people can probably replace some of the above key words with “religion” if they are creative enough
Anyway, your right they got no right to inflict disabilities on children….. maybe when they grow up they can decide if they want to be deaf induced and be like their parents… but before they turn 18, let they be as physically healthy with all their senses in tact as possible…
Great read! Keep it up!
I’m shocked by the Media Watch link. How can someone so single minded criticise others for producing a sensible debate. Although on this topic there really is no need for a debate!
Any animal that isn’t human is unlikely to live very long being deaf and thus it is a disability that surely no right minded parent would want to inflict that on their child. Whether they are proud of silence or not!! It’s disgusting and wrong and again a small step to opening the flood gates to all kinds of wierdness!
I quite fancy a baby with two faces…….
Exactly. Where does this end? If deaf people can deliberately inflict deafness on a child, what about blind people demanding blind babies or people with defective limbs demanding babies with defective limbs so that they can ‘live in the same community’ as their children?
Sickos, the lot of them.
Candid:
You are wrong. Snakes are deaf. Most terrestrian animals rely far more on smell and sight than they do hearing. Hearing is the least useful of the five senses.
Whether these deaf parents are right or wrong, their interest in choosing to have deaf children is directly related as a backlash against generations of deaf people experiencing the wrong-minded eugenicist attitudes that sought to eradicate the gene pool that causes deafness.
The attitude of this article is born of ignorance, from someone who has likely never experienced deaf culture or met fully functioning deaf adults. If you’ve never experienced the deaf community, your reaction is, “Deafness, how sad.” But it isn’t.
Those deaf babies will be just fine. If their deaf parents are successful enough in society to be able to seek out and afford elective reproduction assistance, they are probably well-suited to raising a deaf child to be a functioning, happy, educated, self-sufficient adult.
Being deaf is only a problem to deaf children who do not get the support they need to thrive and to hearing people who lose their hearing later in life. Otherwise, with proper upbringing, any deaf child can lead a great life.
OK so I shouldn’t have said ANY animal but clearly hearing and vocalisation are pretty vital attributes to our closest relatives! If you don’t hear the vocalisation for Leopard/tiger/big scary animal with teeth – you are unlikely to see out your first year!
I have no problem with deaf parents adopting deaf children – that is a sensible suituation benefits both parties.
Of course people think how sad. There aren’t many cases of people choosing to be deaf after reaching adulthood. As someone who has had the function of hearing for my entire life I would not like to sacrifice that. As much as I believe that deaf people don’t have a problem with their deafness and do form great communities (I have been lucky enough to have been involved with one). Nobody chooses to become deaf and therefore that decision should not be made for an unborn child!
I’m right there with Candid.
Grecoverde, it is outrageous that you think inflicting a disability on an unborn is ok because “those deaf babies will be just fine” – talk about twisted. No parents has the right to deliberately handicap their child just because they feel that it will help them get closer to their children.
And yes, being deaf is considered to be a handicap because at some level it prevents children and adults participating as fully in society as other people. That’s not to say that deaf people don’t participate, rather that some opportunities are out of their reach and actively making a child deaf robs them of those opportunities. Neither you or I or anyone else should be allowed to physically impair someone and take those opportunities away out of choice.
How proposterous can people get???
I have spent over half my life, helping people to hear. I have had, for some 24 years, a hearing aid practice whose sole aim is to give everyone as wide an experience of the world as possible. I have NEVER had anyone come in and say they would wish themselves or their children to be deaf.
Deafness, where it exists, is a continuum from a natural light loss, which can be a social problem, to a profound loss, where there is no residual aidable hearing.
Most cases now can be helped, if not necessarily remedied, by suitable hearing aids. Those whose loss exceeds what is aidable can be in a different situation where a different language is used, unless they are extremely good lip-readers….and they do exist! . This, like our spoken and heard language has to be painfully acquired over a period, so there is no advantage to it.
No-one denies that the ‘deaf community’ (a horrible phrase!) is extremely supportive, and one would expect no less…..but…….
Would people ask for thalidomide-affected children, or blind, or mal-formed features? I would hope not!
In my mind it is an invasion of the individual’s inalienable right to as perfect a mind and body as is possible……after all, that is what science and medicine have been striving to achieve since time-immemorial
Reading through the Telegraph article at the link, I see an awful lot of “Coulds” and “Claims”. The legislation might allow couples to select deaf babies. Campaigners believe the Government’s position is softening.
That said, with technology advancing as it is, we should be using hypotheticals to anticipate the effects advancements will have on society. I’m just not sure that what any of the papers are reporting is a full picture of what’s occuring. We only have to look at some of the whoppers that get wheeled out everytime a genetic researcher talks about experimental research involving animal and human DNA to realise very few people understand what scientists are actually doing.
With regards to the current debate: Are we actually able to anticipate whether embryos will be deaf or not? It stands to reason that we can only identify a genetic bias to that effect, but how effective are we at doing that? I don’t know the answer myself; the article makes no mention of it either, and I think that’s probably an important piece of information.
As for anticipating the future, this debate is a small part of a much larger debate, a fascinating discussion regarding the future. My instinct on it is that in a hundred years or so, whether we currently approve or not, the genie will be out of the bottle and “designer” babies will not only exist, but will be part of standard medical practice, if not for the whole population then certainly for the rich.
Is it wrong to allow people of different races and nationalities to adopt transracially or transnationally? I hope not. I try not to worry about what folks who are not in my position will think when they see my caucasian face accompanying my daughter of Chinese descent.
I hope that people who see parent-child combinations they don’t understand will find a way to stop and think about whether real harm is being done or if they are simply indulging in their opinions.
[...] Of course there are some audistic jerks decrying this enlightened attitude of the Parliament : Deaf couples choosing deaf babies is sick « Letters From A Tory. [...]
Let’s remember that the issue is not one of inflicting deafness on an embryo, but preserving those who already exist that happen to carry the deafness gene.
These embryos are already created, and the issue is actually whether government has the right to tell the parents to destroy the deaf embryos to keep those who are hearing, if any. Bear in mind that this is no guarantee that those preserved will be 100% healthy.
And this begins a slippery slope. If government has the right to order certain embryos destroyed, it can lead to government mandating certain individuals to be worthy of less rights than others. This attitude inevitably spreads to society in general who would then deprive certain people of access to human rights as they did blacks and Jews in history. Why, because they were defined by government as less than desirable.
Additionally, with deafness not being an impairment of general health, ability or capacity to contribute to society, it therefore does not deserve to be lumped with fatal neurodegenerative disorders or conditions that mean a lifetime of total care.
Yes, it is ‘inflicting’ deafness as you are deliberately selecting an embryo on the basis that it has the deafness gene.
“deafness not being an impairment of general health, ability or capacity to contribute to society” – what?!? of course deafness is an impairment. Deaf people are not able to contribute in society to same degree as hearing people, and robbing them of one of the five basic human senses means by definition they do not have the same abilities as other people.
And if deafness is such a minor or irrelevant handicap then why do these parents want to choose a deaf embryo for their children? Surely if there is no difference between deaf and hearing people then there is no need to handicap the child in the first place?
Isn’t this like the old habit of Indian parents maiming their children so that they’ll be able to make a lucrative living for the family by begging? As a parent, I thought that parents always wanted the best for their children – I can’t see how depriving a child of one of his/her senses can be in their best interests. What will the child’s opinion be when he/she reaches adulthood & is told the truth by the parents (they will tell the child – yeah?)
Tory, what you are saying is called audism. The definition of audism is the attitude that hearing and speaking are superior to not hearing and speaking, and discrimination on that basis is acceptable. A parallel word is racism.
Disability, for Deaf people, is not due to their hearing; it is a condition IMPOSED by the attitudes of people in the wider community who do not, by custom, accept people without hearing. There have been communities in history that not only accepted its deaf citizens as full participants, they even naturally included sign language in general discourse. One of them was in Kent, England.
This has nothing to do with being ‘inferior’ or ’superior’. The fact of the matter is that hearing people have access to more opportunities in life, but this is not because of discrimination or prejudice. Deafness is not a disability because of other people’s attitudes – that is an appalling comment to make. As hearing is one of the most fundamental human senses, society has been built around people being able to hear and that is why deafness is considered a disability. Society and government should support those with disabilities, but using science to promote disability is completely wrong.
As RM rightly said, depriving a child of one of the basic human senses OUT OF CHOICE is never in their best interests – this only reason we are having this discussion is because the deaf parents want a deaf child because they think it’s better for THEM and will make THEM feel closer to their child. This is not discrimination, this is common sense – science should never ever ever be used to create disabled children just to suit the parents’ interests.
“Deafness is not a disability because of other people’s attitudes” – wow, you really are so naive! Thank you for not being afraid to publicly display your complete lack of understanding of anything relating to Deafness!!
No, thank you for your well-argued, rounded, comprehensive and fully explained perspective.
If we learn how to detect an embryo’s future level of intelligence (as we can apparently now detect its future ability or inability to hear), will persons of (at best) moderate intelligence similarly demand a “right” to have children guaranteed never to exceed the intellectual abilities of their parents?