Deaf People

Deaf Demand Right to Designer Children

After reading this topic, the first thing that popped into my head was, "Oh my good, that's awful." After this thought, I decided to take a couple days to think about it, read up on it, and try to come up with some reasons as to why parents would want to do this. I came up with a few and I still don't understand how people could think like this.

In the first article I read, there were parents that said "Creating made-to-order babies with genetic defects would seem to be an ethical minefield, but to some parents with disabilitiesÐ'...it just means making babies like them." (Tanner) I then took a moment to think about this, and my head started to hurt. This type of selfishness is usually limited to pre-pubescent children and some young adults, but most teenagers have more regard for others than these parents. These children have no choice in whether or not they are going to be deaf, and have to live with the choice their parents made for them. An analogy you could use is the crack babies, born addicted to cocaine because their mothers chose to do drugs. If someone wants to be deaf, like their parents, they can have surgery to remove the necessary parts of their ears, just like somebody could chose to do cocaine, just like their parents. If any logical or reasonable person who is deaf was given the choice of whether or not they wanted to be deaf, they would all choose no.

I feel like one thing these deaf parents don't think about is what their children will say to them when they find out their parents chose them to be deaf. I have been wondering if parents would try to keep their kids from finding out they chose their disability for them. If I had made this choice for my child, I would definitely try to keep it from my child. I would not be able to face my child after they had found out.

After reading some more articles, I found another statement that defends these parents as they choose to have a deaf baby. The statement was made in the article "Ð''Designer' babies with made-to-order defects?" It says, "If people in a shared culture all have the common clinical defect, then it's maybe not a defect in the traditional sense."(Ð''Designer' Babies) The problem with this statement is that there is no culture of deaf people. The American Heritage Dictionary defines culture as "The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought." Being deaf is not socially transmitted; it is defined as a physical disability. Therefore, this claim is invalid at the point that culture was mentioned. Also, the word defect is used in the "non-traditional" sense. I can't seem to think of a non-traditional defect used in any context. A defect is a defect, and deafness is a human defect in any sense. If anything can't do what it is made to do, it is considered defective. For example, deaf people have ears that don't work, and their hearing is considered defective. Somebody who wants a deaf baby because it fits into their way of life is giving their child less than a full life and worse chance at succeeding in life.

Using our technology to give babies a disability is irresponsible. It is even more irresponsible on society's part to allow for this sort of thing to happen. This is comparable to society allowing nuclear weapons to be used. We have been given the ability to alter what a baby is going to look like or what defects it has. We have been given this amazing technology and people are beginning to use it to give people the same defects we are trying to stop from happening. There have been medical advances trying to cure deafness or at least give deaf people some form of hearing and we are undoing this. The article "Falling on deaf ears" explains this device implanted into the ear of a deaf child to help with the development of their hearing. There was talk in this article about the deaf parents who conceived a deaf child purposely considering this device for their child (Hagan), which makes absolutely no sense. They spent the money to make sure they have the deaf child, and now they are spending more money to "cure" their deafness. It makes no sense at all and these parents need to take a real hard look at what they have done.

I think the people most responsible for this, are those who actually perform the embryo selection; the scientists. These people who learn how to play God and change the course of nature are abusing the technology that has been imposed on them. Chances are, the people who developed this technology would never