the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

What is a Cochlear Implant and Why Does the Deaf Community Oppose It?

A cochlear implant is an electronic device designed to provide useful hearing and improved communication ability to individuals who are profoundly deaf. For those with profound hearing loss, hearing aids provide little, if any, benefit. The cochlear implant will not cure deafness. It, in my opinion, has much to offer to those deaf people who can be implanted.

The Deaf culture believes that this technology will have a significant impact on their culture. They are vehemently opposed to any deaf person, children especially, being "Cut open" to put something foreign into their body. Some deaf people look down on those deaf people who have had the implants, and consider them outsiders even traitors to their own culture.

What is the Cochlear Implant Comprised of and How Does it Work?

The cochlear implant consists of both internal and external components. The internal components are those that are implanted surgically under the skin behind the ear. The extern

The essential link among the American Deaf community is American Sign Language. Mastery of American Sign Language and skillful storytelling are highly valued in Deaf culture (Deaf Culture 2). This community shares a common sense of pride in their culture and language.

Culture is a shared set of learned behaviors of a group of people who have their own language, values, rules of behavior, and traditions. It results from a group of people coming together to form a community around shared experience, common interests, and shared norms of behavior (Deaf Culture 2). To you and me, hearing is the norm. However, to the deaf, deafness is the norm, and hearing is only another form of communication. To the Deaf community, the fact that the dominant hearing culture considers deafness as the lack of a sensory function, and therefore a disability, is an insult. To the Deaf community, being deaf is just a form of existence that is different from that experienced by the hearing. There exists, in the Deaf community, a rich heritage and pride in the ability to overcome adversity as individuals and as a group (De Vera 1-4).

The cochlear implant will not cure deafness. However, I feel this device has much to offer to those who can benefit from it. The impact of the cochlear implant on the Deaf culture is significant, but their culture will not cease to exist because of it. The cochlear implant technology is still a very young technology that has many researchers improving on it daily. I do not believe the Deaf community has anything to fear from this technology as it exists now, but will the future of this technology endanger this culture? Only time will tell.

In the area of implants, technological progress has been slow. Moreover, this was not the only area that was slow to accept implants. It appears that those who were prominent in the research of speech coding and auditory psychophysics were also unwilling to experiment with the implants. In addition, it appears the general feeling was that implant research, on any level, should not be done. Many of these prominent doctors insisted that no benefit was possible with a cochlear implant because the theories all indicated that the implant could not produce any sound that would be worth hearing. Yet there were patients with implants who were hearing sounds they considered useful ((NIH Consens Statement 1-25). If accomplishment were based on theory, then bumblebees would not fly, because according to aerodynamic theory, they cannot fly.

The information with reference to children varies depending on when it was published and who published it. The most recent information indicates there have been approximately three thousand seven hundred children implanted to date in the United States (Valley Children's Hospital 4). In addition, the minimum age for implantation recently went from two years to eighteen months of age. Not every child is a candidate for a cochlear implant. Only 1% of severe and profoundly deaf children will be candidates for this procedure (Valley Children's Hospital 4). The cochlear implant is just the beginning of many hours of hard work and therapy. There is also the question of who should decide if a child gets an implant. Ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents and most hearing parents want their children to be hearing like them. The Deaf Culture says that if a child is born deaf then that child is deaf and should be part of the Deaf Culture (those who are deaf whose language is American Sign Language). We need more information on the Deaf community in order to understand the position they have taken.

The cochlear implant was designed to provide "useful" hearing, and in some deaf people, it does. Will a successful implant mean the deaf will hear like hearing people? No. Will it automatically allow the deaf person to communicate with hearing people or in the same way as hearing people without obstacles or barriers and without being dependent on

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2892
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)