Persuasive Essay On The Cochlear Implant

(n.d.). Part one: the deaf community and cochlear implants my child can have more choices: reflections of deaf mothers on cochlear implants for their children. Cochlear Implants: Evolving Perspectives. Retrieved February 09, 2018, from http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/excerpts/CIEP.html

The documentary Sound and Fury by Roger Weisberg takes its views inside the rarely seen world of deaf culture for the family struggle over controversial medical technology known as the cochlear

When your child is born, you want to make sure they're healthy. The doctors tell you that your child cannot hear and that he/she is a perfect candidate for a cochlear implant (CI). You have to decide, as a parent, whether to give he/her an implant and to be oral, not to give the implant and to be Deaf, or both. My decision is to give my child a CI, teach he/her to be oral, sign language, and being Deaf.

A cochlear implant is a medical device that essentially does the same thing that a cochlea (inner ear) would do. Unlike hearing aids, cochlear implants do not make the sound louder, they allow sound to go by parts of the cochlea and stimulate the nerves that allow you to hear sound. Because Heather was the first deaf Miss America, this sparked controversy. People thought that Heather should not have gotten a cochlear implant because she represented the Deaf and hard of hearing community. Although some people did not agree with her decisions, within three to five years she could understand complex sounds like

Cochlear Implants are an object that is very controversial in the deaf community. “A Cochlear Implants is a device that provdes direct electrical stimulation to the auditory (hearing) nerve in the inner ear.” (“Cochlear Implants”) Cochlear Implants bypass the damaged hair cells, and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Depending on when the Cochlear Implant is implanted it allows people to hear sounds, and sometimes even their own voice. While it does not cure hearing loss or deafness, it does allow people to hear. On more technical terms a Cochlear Implant includes parts like a microphone, speech processor, and a transmitter which each play a different part in the Cochlear Implant. The microphone picks up sounds, sends them to the speech processer, and then the speech processor analyzes and digitized the sound signal, thus sending them to a transmitter worn on the head. The debate of whether or not Cochlear Implants are right in the deaf community is one that has been going on for years. People believe having Cochlear Implants are a good thing, because they allow deaf people to communicate with hearing people, it allows people who are not helped by conventional hearing aids to be helped, and it creates new possibilities for deaf people. However there are also people that argue that having a Cochlear Implant is a bad thing, because it proposes the idea that deaf people need to be fixed, it can give deaf people false hope, and it proposes the idea that deaf people have a

Most doctors recommend that children with cochlear implant only use spoken language as a method of communication so they can maximize the benefits from the cochlear implant. However, the popular method of communication for children with cochlear implants is total communication which is the integration of oral communication and ASL. Although Heather Artinian was fluent in ASL before she received her cochlear implant, she was able to communicate with hearing and deaf people through both ASL and spoken language after years of intensive speech therapy (Aronson, Sound and Fury: Six Years Later). When cochlear implant users take it off, they cannot hear any sounds so they are technically still deaf. Even though they are able to hear sounds, cochlear implant recipients will not be able to identify themselves as hearing individuals. When they bridge the gap between the deaf and hearing world, they can still be a part of both cultures without defining themselves as a part of only one culture (TedX: The Heather World). Therefore, the cochlear implant can be a great device for deaf people who want to stay in the Deaf community but still be able to take advantage of additional opportunities in the hearing

A cochlear implant is an implanted medical device for the deaf or hard of hearing that do not benefit from the traditional hearing aid. It is composed of an internal device that is implanted in the recipient’s head and an external device that is the sound processor. The sound processor collects sound and then transmits it to the implanted device, which then sends it directly to the brain to be interpreted as language. During the time that I was choosing a hearing solution for my daughter I experienced a lot of negative opinions from the deaf culture (community of deaf people who share sign language among other things). They seem to be against parents choosing to have their small children implanted. The deaf culture presumes

Since a forced cochlear implant would introduce the child into the hearing culture, this decision would limit the child’s opportunity to explore and learn more about the Deaf culture. One such example demonstrates this by showcasing a video containing an interview with the hearing parents of a deaf girl who has a cochlear implant; in this video, the parents stated that the reason why they chose to have their daughter receive the cochlear implant, who was at the age of three and a half, was because the child was struggling with her deafness and that the cochlear implant was the only solution that would fix the issue (“Cochlear Implants – A Cultural Threat”, n.d.). The main issue here was that the parents believed that the only way their daughter would have a happy life was to use the cochlear implant; there was little consideration given to alternative methods, primarily because she was at a young age. If a forced cochlear implant were to be given to all Deaf children early on in their lives, they would be given no choice but to accept the hearing culture; although they could have functioned well in the Deaf culture, the culture that they were born in, the mandatory cochlear implant forces them into a culture that opposes their

2) I feel another great achievement in the last fifty years has been the cochlear implant. This is a surgically implanted in a patient’s cochlea in their ear that is deaf or severally hearing impaired, because of damage to the sensory cells in their cochlea. www.cochlear.com/‎

There are many things that people in the hearing world take for granted every day, such as verbal communication, using a telephone or something as simple as the feeling you get when your favorite song comes on the radio. To a person that has been completely immersed in the deaf community, it may be easy to view the sense of sound as unnecessary. As a member of the haring community it would seem nearly impossible to live a day without sound. Cochlear implants are devices that help a person who is deaf gain hearing to some degree, and in some cases nearly full hearing. This new technology has become very controversial throughout both the hearing, and the deaf world.

Passages A & B have different views on what would work best for the Deaf people, but they both want want a positive outcome for the Deaf community. Passage A mainly talks about how the cochlear implants do not benefit deaf people and how the permanent effects from it can be a disadvantage for the implant patient in the deaf community. “Implanted children would "end up trapped between two worlds: they can't live the way hearing people can, and yet they won't have grown up in the deaf community, using ASL" (Zimmer 85)”. The author helps the reader understand the Deaf community rather then understand the medical view of cochlear implants.

This mindset has sparked incredible backlash from the Deaf community. The Deaf community has fought through years of discrimination and oppression to be viewed as equal human beings, therefore the introduction of these implants further emphasised that deafness is something abnormal and that it should be fixed. An article from NPR reminds us that historically parents had to “send their son or daughter away to a boarding school for the deaf” (NPR par. 1), which is why the Deaf community is fighting so hard for their elevated status to be protected.The National Association of the Deaf suggests that the idea that deafness needs to be fixed is due to the fact that “There is little or no portrayal of successful, well adjusted deaf and hard of hearing children and adults without implants” (National Association of the Deaf par. 8). It is easy to understand why parents would choose to implant their children when there is little shown about successful unimplanted Deaf people. They fear that their child may suffer academically from not being able to fully comprehend class lessons or not be able to get their dream job, or any higher paying job, due to not being able to hear. Also, they fear for their safety. They worry about their child not hearing a car coming or an emergency alarm. Cochlear implants give deaf people the opportunity to abandon their deafness and the

The People of the Deaf community believe that implants will destroy their culture, while many other believe Cochlears give a new meaning to the word “Deaf”. Cochlear users are not concerned with destroying the culture that was built but they are concerned with opening new doorways that allow them to fit in. But Why can’t deaf people use sign language and talk?

The article “Parents of deaf children with cochlear implants: a study of technology and community” focus mostly on the clinical structures and how parents decide to use cochlear implant or not. The data shows that the clinic, the state and local school districts are working together to anticipate parental needs.

The Bionic Ear has revolutionised the lives of deaf individuals all over the world, it is not only a great scientific achievement, but also a great progression in a socio-cultural context within the lives and communities of the deaf and hearing-impaired individuals. The Bionic Ear with the aid of IT has provided new capabilities and in turn gives individuals new choices of