Hacker News Reader

Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

Science doesn't (and shouldn't) care for how people socialize around a disability.

I recognize the power and a reclaimed self worth that comes with reframing narratives around deafness.

The lack of hearing is a disease. Because diseases are nominatively about being at dis-ease. As long as it's difficult for deaf people to socialize with those who outside the community, it dis-eases them.

View on HN

like someone mentioned in a separate comment, you are conflating disease with disability here. when people become too old to walk without assistance, you wouldn't say that they have a walking disease.

> like someone mentioned in a separate comment, you are conflating disease with disability here. when people become too old to walk without assistance, you wouldn't say that they have a walking disease.

This girl's disease was a genetic auditory neuropathy.

They cured her genetic auditory neuropathy.

Pedantic arguments about what it's called are missing the point. The person had a specific disease. It was cured.

to you, this is a pedantic argument. but to millions of Deaf people in the US alone, this is a very important political point. for example, lots of Deaf people who prefer to live without cochlear implants face lots of pressure from people who consider deafness to be a "disease" to be "cured", when in fact, they feel their most authentic way of living to be something different. in this way, language is significant

And people who do prefer to live with cochlear implants face pressure from the deaf community itself. You can't win. This was an achievement. A girl who probably saw this as a cure, saw success. Why can't we just be happy for her instead of detracting because others wouldn't make the same choice?

18-month-olds don't usually have opinions on what does or doesn't count as a 'cure': that's a bit too abstract for most of them. Their parents can.

> when people become too old to walk without assistance, you wouldn't say that they have a walking disease.

Why not? We have some peculiar cultural memes related to accepting the inevitable end of life, which we perhaps should revisit. I see no reason to not consider aging itself as a slow-burn disease, one we'll hopefully cure at some point too.

"Peculiar cultural memes" is an odd way of describing a piece of advice that one encounters so frequently in cultures the world over.

Well, peculiar now, given the understanding of biology we gained over the last 70-ish years. Individually, it still makes sense, but at social level, it stops us from working on fixing the problem.

Yes but the arthritis or whatnot that causes the impairment is a disease.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com