Discrimination?

[dash_zero]

Saw a TV crime drama recently which involved a fictional deaf group protesting against a clinic providing cochlear implants. The overall theme /argument, was that these people saw their being hearing impaired as on par with race /religion in the sense that, trying to 'fix' their condition was attacking /deneying who they as a group are.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this

[Loosehead]

Interesting concept, I'd have to say that the reasoning is flawed. Clearly the human body is designed to have hearing, if a person has not, then I cannot see that as some sort of seperate group along the same lines as race would be. Are they saying people born deaf or just people that end up deaf? they may have more of a case with the former but they're still on dodgy ground.

[dash_zero]

It definitely got me thinking. Similar to what you say, the human body is generally accepted as built for certain optimum performance -hearing ability being one such attribute. So could we say that, in the same vein as the feeling of these deaf people (they were from birth in the programme), someone calling discrimation on the screening of down syndromme would not have ground to stand on?

In relation to my other post just now on birth screening, the debate could then lead to how do we decide what the human body/mind is designed to have? Could we turn to anything that would be a disadvantage to a individual in an evolutionary sense as being a design flaw?

[mycats]

Well no one is forcing them to get an implant are they?
I've seen these people before, they are quite militant about it all. If my child was born deaf, I would want an implant to help lead as full and easy a life as possible