All The Young Dudes

Media Watch: Aunt Agony Writes

Prior to the furore of the Designer Babies article, was the following Aunt Agony column. Suffice to say it had all the hallmarks of an overwrought hearing person, and an equally fatuous solution provided by an experienced hearing person experienced. I’m holding my tongue here… the solution speaks for itself!

THE PROBLEM:

Our grandson is nearly five years old and is profoundly deaf, but received a cochlear implant in March 2006, which has changed his life. With this, and specialist teaching, he hears, is learning to speak, can count and is starting to read. His parents would like him to go to a specialised school for deaf children, where all teaching is oral, but the local education
authority refuses to pay for this and has said that he must go to the school in their area that has a deaf unit, but where
the additional help for him would be in sign language, which he no longer uses. What can be done to help him?

THE SOLUTION:

Your grandson’s parents should contact the National Deaf Children’s Society (0808 800 8880) for advice and, if necessary,
legal support. He should already have been statemented. If this has not been done, the education authority should be asked to complete a statement. Given the success of the implant, the suggestion that he should be given support using sign language is fatuous. Do not, though, rule out a mainstream school. If he were to sit at the front of the class, he may well be able to cope perfectly well.

The original can be found at:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article3056315.ece

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sphere: Related Content

Hearing People Demand The Right To Self Designed Babies

Screaming-Kate Simpleton, Health Editor

Hearing  parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a hearing child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Hearing People (RNIP).

Hickory Dickory Dock, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of hearing parents would want a child who is healthy, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle.

Dock’s stance is likely to be welcomed by other hearing organisations, including the British Hearing Association (BHA), which is campaigning to amend government legislation to allow the creation of babies with hearing.

A clause in the Human Ah-Tissue and Wipe Their Snot Bill, which is passing through the House of the Big Fat Tub Of Lards, would make it illegal for parents undergoing embryo screening to choose an embryo with an abnormality if healthy embryos exist.

In America a deaf couple created a storm of controversy by deliberately creating a normal baby by choosing a sperm donor with generations of deafness in his family.

This would be impossible under the bill in its present form in the UK. Dat-ability charities say this makes the proposed legislation discriminatory, because it gives hearing parents the right to create “designer babies” with a multitude of genetic conditions while banning deaf couples from deliberately creating a healthy baby.

The prospect of selecting “hearing embryos” is likely to be seized on by campaigners against genetic screening who will argue that this is an inevitable outcome of allowing “designer babies”.

Doctors are opposed to individuals creating any self designed baby. Professor Stasis Storm-trooper Grinskiviksik, medical director of the Normal Centre, a clinic in London that designs embyros, said: “This would be an abuse of medical technology. People should not be taking it upon themselves to design their own babies. It deprives us doctors of highly lucrative work. To deliberately create an embryo without consulting  qualified embryo designer, would be contrary to the ethos of our capitalistic society.”

Dock, who previously ran into controversy as director-general of the Royal Society for the Skinning of Cats Eight Ways (RSSCAEW) where she pushed through extensive job cuts, and over worked the remaining workers, said in an interview with The Sunday Times: “Few parents would choose to have a normal embryo, but for those many parents who do not, we think they should be allowed to exercise that choice and we would support them in that decision.

“There are a number of hearing forums where there are discussions about this. There are a big majority of activists who say that there is a cultural identity in being born hearing and that we should not destroy that cultural identity by preventing children from being born hearing.”

Dock added: “We would like to retain, as far as possible, parental choice, but it has to be in conjunction with a clinician so that people know exactly what they are expected to pay for their choices.”

Next month a coalition of stupidity organisations will launch a campaign to amend the bill to make it possible for parents to choose the embryos that carry a genetic [hearing] abnormality.

Leprechaun, chairman of the BHA, said: “If choice of embryos for implantation is to be given to citizens in general, and if normal and other people are allowed to choose embryos that will be ‘like them’, sharing the same characteristics, language and culture, then we believe that hearing people should have the same right.”

Leprechaun added that the BHA believes it is very likely to become common for hearing parents to deliberately create hearing children.

To create a “designer baby” using preimplantation genetic diagnosis, couples need to go through a lengthy in vitro fertilisation (IVF) process that involves the services of an architect and photoshop. Then the couple would be recommended that they furnish the womb to make it an environment conducive to hearing by decking it out with 5.1 channel speakers, sense surround sound and meaningless conversation and bird sounds pumped in regularly. The embryos created are then placed in Deux Ex Machina that genetically purifies the embryo and only the healthy ones are then implanted in the mother’s womb.

This weekend the RNIP played down Dock’s comments by pointing out that the charity does not advocate deliberately creating hearing babies.

A spokesthing said: “While the RNIP does not believe in the individual’s right to choose, we would not actively encourage the selection of self designed embryos over clinician recommended ones for implantation when both are available. Most of all, it is important not to listen to the bitch who currently leads the organisation, as it is not representative our views.”

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sphere: Related Content

Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part Two

As many [or some] of us are aware, The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, is currently a hot topic. Fueled by heated rhetoric, many blog posts, articles, forum entries and emails are currently discussing the issue, but they all share a glaring  incongruity between what the The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is actually about and what people are actually responding to.  Emotionally charged and polarised responses, that are ignorant of the bill and the source material.

An exquisite irony that is lost on the hearing [and Deaf and deaf] respondees [it should be respondents, but respondees sounds rather apt].

Inspite of their access to information and explanations regarding the Deaf response to the The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, via the STOP EUGENICS campaign, the editors of the [Sunday] Times Online CHOSE to frame the article in terms of Designer Baby Chic! The whole concept is encapsulated in the title of the article, Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children.This had the effect of inflaming rather than encouraging debate. It created a spectacle whereby blog readers, forum attendees, email posters, and commentators were responding the terrifying image of mutilated children and selfish Deaf people, conjured up by the words: Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children, so much so that the rest of the article, let alone the actual Bill and other source material, is irrelevant .

I have already posted an analysis,and my concern here is the issue of who sets the agenda when discussing Deaf and deaf issues, and the terms of the debate thus laid out. Setting the agenda for debate is major theme in chapter two of Paddy Ladd’s Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood, and is a question that is overlooked in the debates that rent the Deaf and deaf communities. We are so conditioned to think in terms of “it is us who are lacking” and this process is encouraged, that many of us don’t ever question this conditioning.

This process is so ingrained in many Deaf and deaf, that they can often [sometimes?] be found on the same side as uninformed hearing people when engaged in debates such the The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill: follow the links in the Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It! Part Two, particularly the FARK thread. Also of note, is the stubbornness of  a poster in the Engineering Deaf Babies For Deaf Couples US and Britain Debate The Selection Of Deaf Embryos and Adopted Childrenblog post.

But the more pertinent point is the unwillingness to question the mainstream accepted assumptions of disability, Deafness, language and culture [which goes along way to explaining the many conundrums that populate discourse - dialogue, debate - between people].

With regards to The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, the terms of the debate has been set by an article written by a hearing person, and published in a hearing newspaper and website, encapsulated in the words, “Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children”. The ensuing debate has been hijacked by hearing people whose understanding of disability and disability issues is uninformed and ignorant. Many of the respondees [lovely word] are vehemently reluctant to entertain any other ways of looking at the disability issue other than the “something is missing or not working” variety. This is not helped by popular media who abdicate their responsibility to INFORM, and engage in sensationalism and spreading FUD [Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt]

Which makes engaging with Hearing world all the more problematic. Many people’s favourite pastime is to blame the Deaf person for the ill effects of living under the yoke of Hearing assumptions. Further blame is apportioned to Deaf people for the failure of any attempts to engage with the Hearing world. All this ignores completely [turns a blind eye to] the Hearing world’s own culpability in the process. A culpability that is willful.

As it stands, current debate in the Deaf and deaf worlds [and indeed between them] is so fragmented. Emotionally charged and polarised and intellectually lazy. A reflection of our mainstream culture. Which is a Hearing one.

There is blame [and accountability], but that is an issue for another time and another post. There is one more post discussing the major themes in chapter two of Paddy’s book, which I hope will shed further light in understanding Deaf Culture.

Meanwhile,

If I say “Woof!”
They say, “Speak English.”
To which I reply, “Exactly!”

Further Reading:

Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part One
Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities: Deaf Gays And Lesbians
Tales Of The Deafhood - The Epiphany
Tales Of The Deafhood - An Introduction
What is Deafhood?
Deafhood: A Process Of Self Repression
Many Tribes
Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It! Part Two
“Stop Eugenics!” = Anti-abortion?
Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It!
Not quite with the Times …
Sunday Times article & my communication with the Sunday Times
In One’s Own Image: Ethics and the Reproduction of Deafness
Ethnicity, Ethics, and the Deaf-World
Informed Choice and Deaf Children: Underpinning Concepts and Enduring Challenges

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sphere: Related Content

Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It! Part Two

I wish I had never read Jared’s The Big Problem on Xmas eve. That FARK thread : Deaf parents demand right to designer deaf children. WAIT, WHAT? WHAT?, that post really spoilt my night. I went to bed dreaming of inflicting severe violence on those perpetrators of fetid and unmitigated stupidity! And when I woke up on Xmas morning, I logged onto the net [of course] and was chatting to Alison, who emailed me with some more links responding to the Times Online article which you can find at the end of this post. Feel free to visit and leave your comments. But you know, we were chatting away, and continually reminding orusleves IT’S XMAS MORNING!

Sarah-Kate Templeton, the journalist [for want of a better word], who wrote the original article, has a case to answer to for writing such a crap piece that further fueled an outpouring of, what I can only call hate! If that hate had some reason behind it, I could deal with it. But there is no rhyme or reason for that hate. Just, don’t…..I’m not in the mood!

Sarah-Kate Templeton, the journalist [for want of a better word], approached Alison Bryan, who was very helpful and spent a considerable amount of time responding to her, for what we hoped would be a decent article. What slap in the face it turned out to be. Instead of an informative piece about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [you know where to find this info on STOP EUGENICS] and why Deafies are opposing it, we get a Designer Baby Themed slew of words, which is supposedly designed to hook the reader with its sensationalist tone.

It does that alright. Instead of an intelligent discourse/ debate, we get a convention of donkeys, mules, asses, goats and sheep, bleating, braying, naying and what other ing they converse in, exchanging pleasantries and farting their well researched and very well informed opinions. Pavlovian Dog style. Is that the target audience of the Times Online paper I wonder? Donkeys, mules, asses, goats and sheep? We do know that donkeys, mules, asses, goats and sheep don’t read English, so perhaps the Times Online felt it didn’t matter if the article was utter tosh?

Yeah, I am angry, and in no mood to be conciliatory towards Hearing people. So please don’t send in comments trying to placate me or to admonish me. However, there is a nice irony in the title of this post, Children Demand Right To Not Stupid Parents. Now the fun begins. Add the word Deaf, and you get Deaf Children Demand Right To Not Stupid Parents. Let’s further elaborate on the concept inherent in the title, Deaf Children Demand Right To Not Stupid Hearing Parents. Too right they do!

This Xmas I once again pondered the question.  The question that is on that is on the tips of every Deaf person’s fingers [and their lips]. Are Hearing people stupid? Not just merely stupid, but intrinsically so? Is there a gene for stupidity? Would they object strenuously to any moves to screen out the stupid gene on account of freedom of speech and first amendment rights?

There I feel better now. Tomorrow when I talk to Alison again, my mind will be clear and I will be my normal, congenial self, and will most likely harbour pleasant thoughts about hearing people, once again. But until then, I am projecting poison arrows and copious amounts of bloodletting!

Anyway, here’s a Xmas card from me to you [Alison forwarded this on to me, from a friend of hers, to whom we are grateful to for making us smile. Thanx Bob!]

JOSEPH: Yes but did you have a PGD done first to check if he’s got an abnormality or not?

You know people, he musta had summat wrong with him… it took 33 years, but they killed him in the end. I think it was the humanity gene that did it!

P.S. And Alison, I hope your Xmas morning gazing up at church ceilings was a pleasant one!

Further Reading:

Children Demand Right To Not Stupid Parents
Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children
Deaf Parents Demand Right To Deaf Children
Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children
Engineering Deaf Babies For Deaf Couples US and Britain Debate The Selection Of Deaf Embryos and Adopted Children
Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children
Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children

Elsewhere:

Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It!
Not quite with the Times …
Sunday Times article & my communication with the Sunday Times

Sphere: Related Content

Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It!

As many bloggers and readers are aware, in the UK, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, is making its way through  the House of Lords. An independent campaign was started in response, investigating and analysing this bill. Specifically Clause 14 (4) (9).

One of the first media responses to this campaign was an article published The Sunday Times,  a UK broadsheet, called [drum roll] Deaf demand right to designer deaf children [end drum roll. Begin rolling eyes].

It was just too much to hope for really. In the year 2007, A.D., modern society, progressive thinking and all that, we still get to bang our heads against a brick wall. The Hearing world [people] just don’t get it.

The title of the piece, gives away the game. Opting for sensationalism that plays into the hands of ignorance and misconception about the campaign and the bill. Straight away, Deaf people are sidelined as a group of outsiders who are demanding the right to create children like themselves, and thereby condemning them to the life of an outsider [this is by inference].

The fact that the article appears in HEALTH NEWS section of the paper [online], reduces the whole debate to one of  health, when it clearly has political, cultural and social implications. This has the effect of lowering the standing of Deaf people as human beings, and it trivialises our voice. If to underscore this fact, Jackie Ballard, who is the Chief Executive of the RNID, was qualifying her comments regarding this bill with:

“There are a small minority of activists………….”

The article is framed as if the RNID, and other big name organisations [who purportedly represent Deaf interests] etc., are the sole engines propelling this campaign, with no credit given to the independent STOP EUGENICS campaign, with whom the Heath editor Sarah-Kate Templeton has been in contact with!

Then there is the use of the word DELIBERATE, in reference the infamous case where an American couple CHOSE a sperm donor who came from a family with a lineage of Deafness. Well, brace yourselves, but it is a well known and well observed fact that Hearing people have been doing this for as long as there have been Hearing people. It’s called inbreeding! When they do it, it’s normal, when we do it, it’s condemning a child to a lifetime of misery!

Not to leave a doctor out of the equation, but the quote from a Professor Gedis Grudzinskas, medical director of the Bridge Centre, a clinic in London, that screens embyros, said:

“This would be an abuse of medical technology. Deafness is not the normal state, it is a disability. To deliberately create a deaf embryo would be contrary to the ethos of our society.”

leaves me feeling rather uneasy, due to its heavy connotations of Eugenics circa the Nazi era.

Sure, the words DESIGNER BABY/ BABIES makes for good, sensationalist copy. But it works against one group of people, in this case Deaf people, while ignoring that when Hearing people actively choose how, what and when, to make their babies, it’s normal. Deafies are demonised, Hearies aren’t!

Not only that, it’s use of the words deaf and hearing impaired are without regard to context, and how Deaf and deaf people actually use them. It goes further by ignoring that Deaf culture exists, and that it is equally as valid and viable as Hearing culture.

Let’s say it again, RNID, does not represent the interests of Deaf people. The final two paragraphs devoted to their voice [a Hearing one], underscores this point. As the US said to the world prior invading Iraq under false pretexts, I say the same to RNID, which serves Deaf people under false pretexts.

“YOU ARE WITH US OR YOU ARE AGAINST US!”

If anything, this article has pandered to ignorance and prejudice, further entrenching commonly held misconceptions. Like I said at the beginning of this article, the Hearies just don’t <SERIOUS BLEEPING> get it!

The article again:

Deaf demand right to designer deaf children

Further Reading:

Not quite with the Times …

Sunday Times article & my communication with the Sunday Times

In One’s Own Image: Ethics and the Reproduction of Deafness

Ethnicity, Ethics, and the Deaf-World

Informed Choice and Deaf Children: Underpinning Concepts and Enduring Challenges

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sphere: Related Content