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www.guardian.co.uk/s...

The parents see their deafness not as a disability but as being part of a linguistic minority, which is all well and good, but do they have the right to force their child to be part of that minority whether they like it or not?

No.
Next question?

do we hearing so called normal people have a right to force our culture and language on people who have their own culture and language, after all thats what all the politcial correctness people go on about people not being repsected from other cultures other lands, so why are deaf people to be-littled and dismissed of rights because they don't want to have to fit into our hearing people way of life, Deaf people and language is a relevelvant as a hearing persons language, why do they have to be forced and discriminated to be other wise,i'd like you to try argue this case on bbc ouch and see what response you would get

Deafness is not a culture per se, it is a culture that has arisen purely in response to a physical disability. Deafness is disability because it is the LACK of an ability - ie, the ability to hear.

If 'all' people were, say, telepathic, then a lack of telepathy would be a disability. If 'all' people could see byond the visible spectrum ,then those who could only see within the visible spectrum would have a disability.

It is simply wicked to deliberately make a child that lacks the 'normal range' of human abilities, just so its parents can feel 'happier' about it. It's like saying that a girl that has been castrated, so she never feels sexual pleasure, having had her clitoris removed in FGM, should be perfectly acceptable, because her similarly castrated mother feels 'happier' having a castrated daughter.

Yes but restoring hearing (eg via cochlear implants) is not without risks. Deaf parents may decide (viewing deafness positively) that the op is not worth the risks. Seems fair enough to me.

This issue keeps coming up. I suppose it’s in part due to the well defined ‘deaf culture’ that many hard of hearing belong to.

I think many of the replies here fundamentally misunderstand the situation.

First of all they are not ‘forcing their child to be deaf’ and they not mutilating healthy babies. The embryos produced by IVF could all become children, some deaf some not. In this type of case your not engineering a child your choosing a child, and for the deaf child the choice would have been to be born deaf, or not born at all. Who are we to choose which live and which don’t!!!!!!!!

It makes me uncomfortable to think that you can only select the ones that meet a certain criteria to live, and the rest get killed. I think a system where as long as the embryo looks viable everything else is left to chance would make a mountain of ethical and moral dilemmas disappear.

listening to the lady on JV how today, was intersting, she came across as confident human being that despite her deafness still lead a full quality of life just because she can't Beethoven or other babble doesn't mean she feels she has missed out or was dissadvantaged by, she is a cultrual memeber of the deaf club she is with, and all she and other deaf people are asking no demanding is to be viewed as equal human beings along with gay people,black people and any other group of human beings that are discrimated against because they are different.Thye want to be independent,they want to drive,get married have jobs,travel everything else humans in a free society enjoy. and why can't they?

I think the headlines are as ususal misleading,they are not seeking to make a child deaf,rather in the event they have successful embryos,they do not want to be forced to reject an embryo on the basis that it is likely to be deaf...aftre all the have a deaf daughter and do not wish to give her the message that it is better than she was not born...why should they choose an embryo that may not be a sfit for implantation but its not deaf so its the one that is available?

I think this "need" for the deaf to have deaf children is very selfcentred and cruel.

Yeah I agreee with you AlecMac...they shouldn't test for deafness at all. It's hardly life threatening. What does it say about us hearing people if we think that some types of people are better than others? We should be thinking about how society can accomodate all its members on an equal footing rather than thinking about how we can reduce the diversity of the human race.
Disability is only defined by what characteristics are disadvantages in the current environment.
If the environment can be changed then we should make that accomodation rather than selecting types of human that fit our current environment.

It is a shame that some people can't see that it might be a positive thing for a child to grow up surrounded by people that are like her, and use a language that is perfectly suited to her rather than assuming it is a selfish wish on the parents part.

Being born deaf means that you won't miss music in any real sense just as no hearing person 'misses' being psychic or seeing beyond the normal colour spectrum.