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Comment by medstrom | Hacker News Reader

Only some of the Deaf have this strong opinion, although you might meet cliques that are all this way. I'm sorry you've encountered them, but it's something of a non sequitur. It's possible to get hearing and still be included.

As the article shows, everyone with impaired hearing, like you, could benefit from a space where sign language rules and where hearing is not needed or even expected. The Deaf enjoy these spaces and I guess it's to be expected that they want to keep these spaces numerous.

Corrective surgeries aren't bad in themselves, but they're bad insofar as they cause people to never become sign language natives, and won't partake in these safe spaces as they cannot fully be at home there.

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There is a simple test to decide whether deafness is "just a difference", and whether causing people to not become sign language natives is good or bad. That test is to consider the reverse of corrective surgeries. How many people would undergo it or would apply it to their children? The count so far is zero, so eliminating deafness is unequivocally good, and "surgeries aren't bad in themselves, but they're bad insofar ..." argument is illogical and dishonest.

This is an important thing to understand, because this is the first of the series of discussions we are going to have as we learn to modify more and more things about ourselves. From things like colorblindness, to things that are currently considered as variation of the norm, to radical changes to the brain that would make people undergoing it effectively a different species.

In all cases the criterion should be everyone making decisions for themselves and for their own children, not trying to shame others into staying with your group, or banning others from creating children with or without features you want.

Actually Deaf people have campaigned against a proposal to ban the selection of embryos based on a preference to have a Deaf child, because they wanted to be able to choose to have a Deaf child. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7287508.stm

The campaign was unsuccessful. UK law now says that:

(9)Persons or embryos that are known to have a gene, chromosome or mitochondrion abnormality involving a significant risk that a person with the abnormality will have or develop—

(a)a serious physical or mental disability,

(b)a serious illness, or

(c)any other serious medical condition,

must not be preferred to those that are not known to have such an abnormality.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/22/section/14

This is unfair, if parents want something, doctors are ready to do, and the government is not providing disability payments for the condition, the government should not meddle with what people do with their lives. Sadly there are too many people who want to tell others how to live, and they'll continue to harm people trying to ban things like euthanasia, cloning, genetic modification of children, etc.

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