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ASL Rose Newsletter
Vol. 3 No. 3
May 2009

Is Cochlear Implant Likened to the $100,000 Car?


Audism Free America [AFA] reports the latest news in its vlog that, despite the Deaf community's unified opposition, Wisconsin Governor Doyle has already put down his signature enacting Wisconsin's Senate Bill # 27 and Assembly Bill #16 that require insurance companies to cover cochlear implants and hearing aids for Deaf individuals under 18 years old ASL Rose concurs with AFA's stance on the basis of the American society's continued gullibility over the benefits of cochlear implants for Deaf individuals. In this newsletter, ASL Rose addresses its firm stand against cochlear implants and, to a much lesser extent, hearing aids. ASL Rose's vehement opposition to cochlear implants is strongly tied to a very costly proposition of cochlear implants for Deaf children from birth to age five. In addition, ASL Rose recognizes the fact of a very limited success rate in cochlear implants for young Deaf children. Today only a few Deaf children benefit from cochlear implants similarly to what few Deaf children of the previous generation actually benefitted from hearing aids. Still, the cochlear implant industry has invested so much time and energy into young Deaf children. Doctors specializing in cochlear implants assert that young Deaf children will benefit immensely from cochlear implants if and when they are implanted at an early age. The basic motive for doctors' continuing work in cochlear implants on young Deaf children has to do with the business undertaking for making money.

Hearing people's obsession and enchantment with the world of sound creates a false hope for Deaf children to hear like them via cochlear implants and/or hearing aid; this significantly contributes to Deaf children's education being misguided and misdirected. Many hearing people are clueless about how to best educate Deaf children, yet they navigate specific plans on educating Deaf children. Deaf-centric educational practices such as ASL-English bilingual approach is both strongly unaccepted and constantly resisted. Too often Deaf individuals, after finishing school under the hearing-centric educational system, are grossly miseducated and marooned to meager existence for the rest of their lives. It must be noted that it is the result of hearing people's ignorance of how to best educate young Deaf children during the formative years. As a matter of fact, it is extremely difficult for hearing people to believe that Deaf learners, without ever hearing a sound in their lives, can become highly educated. Therefore, hearing sound has nothing to do with the cultivation of a Deaf mind to the highest level possible.

It is more likely for parents who have no Deaf experience to panic when they discover their child to be deaf and want his/her hearing fixed immediately in order to remove a stigma as having something wrong with him/her. They cannot see how their Deaf child will make progress linguistically if he/she cannot hear spoken communication. How will the child communicate, they wonder? How will the child learn? Many parents begin searching “cures” for their child’s hearing problem. Cochlear implants have often been hailed as being the “cure for deafness.” In media, many stories applauding the “success” of cochlear implants are ridiculous to the extent that they tell of Deaf children who, after being implanted, can now allegedly speak and hear as if they had never been deaf at all. The truth, however, is that these children won’t become hearing at all.

An ear that cannot hear is not similar to an eye with less than 20/20 vision. The eye’s abilities can be corrected with glasses to make it more productive in sight. An ear that cannot hear cannot be corrected in a similar fashion with sight. Cochlear implants will never provide children who were born Deaf with the same hearing ability as that of a child born hearing. At best, cochlear implants help only in the processing of sounds at the environmental sound level and fall short at the level needed for accessing spoken language. When hearing parents choose to have their Deaf child cochlear implanted with the hope of raising the child on spoken language alone, they run into a big risk for their Deaf child to not acquire a human language at all. Needless to say, language delay often causes severely negative effects on Deaf children later in their lives. If the Deaf child is unable to process information through auditory means that are supposedly aided by cochlear implants, it surely slows him/her down in his/her educational process and is less powered in his/her quest of learning about the world.

The media sources often portray Deaf people as handicapped, not intelligent, incomplete individuals, not capable of full communication, and other negative perceptions enough to foster an image that Deaf people must have cochlear implants and hearing aids in order to improve their lives. Often, parents feel embarrassed having Deaf children and, in most cases in today's techonology, quickly accept cochlear implants as a perfect solution, they think, for their children. The media is mindlessly controlled by the “hearing” super majority as they praise cochlear implants as the best solution to make Deaf children “hear.” In reality, parents become gullible to the stories on the success of cochlear implants. Many implanted Deaf children where the cochlear implants did not work at all to help them acquire a spoken language frantically scramble to learn a signed language but their level of ASL proficiency are, sad to say, substandard. In this sense, the critical time for Deaf children to acquire a human language is forever lost. Ultimately, Deaf children are doomed to miseducation and, in many instances, it is too late to straighten them out linguistically, educationally, emotionally, and socially for their satisfactory participation in American society.

In closing, cochlear implants will not make a Deaf child become a Hearing child. So many Deaf children who were implanted and went through years of speech and listening training resulted in nothing gained to them because spoken language remains unnatural to them. Deaf individuals stopped using the device later in life and turn to signed language as a primary means of communication. Most doctors know nothing about the successful lives of Deaf adults, even without cochlear implants and/or hearing aids. Instead they remain to hold a dim, pathological view of Deaf people. Having a pathological view of Deaf people tends to place the doctor's inability to see Deaf people beyond lacking hearing. In the minds of many doctors, they interpret that Deaf people are disabled and need to be “fixed.” The doctors hold the promise of cochlear implants and hearing aids to enhance Deaf children’s hearing abilities for improving their speech and education. It is a natural move for doctors to become a strong advocate for cochlear implants in all Deaf babies and children. Parents are rarely, if not never, told by doctors about the social-cultural dimension of Deaf people and typically are sidetracked into the misadventure of raising their Deaf children.

The bottom line is that requiring insurance companies to pay the high cost of cochlear implants for Deaf individuals under the age of 18 years old is basically unthinkable and not right. Why should we pay a higher premium on health insurance when the coverage of cochlear implants with the proof of very limited success in deaf children becomes widely available? It is like paying a very expensive car that can move only 25 miles per hour with frequent repairs and high maintenance cost. Would you buy that car? Many thanks to Tami Davidson's imaginative drawing where the picture shown above has an equivalent to 10,000 words. Should you view closely to Tami's artwork, you will note several hidden meanings in the picture. One example is the driver's shattered window that makes him/her harder time to see through that window. That part could be interpreted in a similar way with cochlear implant where a deaf person with the aid of cochlear implants is still having difficult time hearing and still different from what hearing people normally hear.

ASL Rose sees it as a serious matter and hopes for the readers to gain better understanding as to why ASL Rose decidedly opposed to the frivolous enactment of the Wisconsin bill. By alerting you through this newsletter, ASL Rose wants not only your attention to ensure that our vigilance is there but also your help to stem the tide of similar bills on cochlear implants and hearing aids in other states from becoming enacted.

Selected Responses to May 2009 Newsletter



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