[BeetleB]

Sorry, but they are differently abled. Their brains and perceptions are different from people who can hear. You are assuming that those differences are all negatives. They do not believe that to be the case.

Many people here self-diagnose as Asperger's. Can you not see why they would not want a "cure"?

Being an extrovert objectively gives you great advantages in (most) societies. As an introverted parent, I would definitely fight any "cure" for my introverted children.

Furthermore, if both parents are deaf and the kid is not deaf, there's a good chance that in the first so many years of life, the kid will have poorer mental development than the deaf kid. Not quite the same, but an example: Deaf kids born to deaf parents hit the same language milestones as hearing kids born to hearing parents. But deaf kids born to hearing parents do worse, because the parents don't know the appropriate way of thinking/communicating.

Related: Deaf kids who were given cochlear implants, but no sign language training fared a lot worse than both hearing kids and deaf kids who learned sign language.

[crooked-v]

As someone who's on the autism spectrum, I think there's an immense qualitative and quantitative difference between someone's brain working differently and the straightforward presence or lack of a specific physical capability.

I'd still be cautious because there's the long-running tendency for any kind of 'cure' for anything inheritable to be used as a eugenics bludgeon, but that's about society rather than the direct effects.

[BeetleB]

> I think there's an immense qualitative and quantitative difference between someone's brain working differently and the straightforward presence or lack of a specific physical capability.

In this case, the lack of a specific physical ability results in that person's brain working differently.

[kortilla]

Not really. The brain compensates in communication skills since it has no auditory processing to deal with.

But it’s otherwise normal. They don’t magically become extremely technical or have other specific positive traits that come from being deaf.

[pie_flavor]

Lacking a sense that someone else has is straightforwardly negative. If being able to hear isn't better than not being able to hear, then nothing at all can be said to be better than anything else. Whether Asperger's is different is irrelevant.

[victorhooi]

See - I don't get this. I've heard people mention it about the deaf community, but it just doesn't make sense to me - perhaps I'm missing something.

I have congenital hearing loss in both ears, and wear hearing aids. I don't know ASL (at least not well enough to use), as I am more or less able to function with hearing aids, with the usual caveats - background noise, group settings, still quite reliant on lip-reading and context to fill in gaps etc.

Within my financial means, I would glad pay to wave a magic wand and restore my ears to "normal". This gene therapy sounds interesting, but I'm not sure if that mutation is the cause of my hearing loss. And I'm always wary of side-effects, haha.

I do see my hearing loss as a disability - and no matter how much you try to dress it up, or with "don't diss my dis-ability" PR campaigns - it still does suck every day. I'm not saying you should discriminate against people for their disability - and I've steadfastly advocated for increased accessibility to level the playing field (e.g. in my workplace, at church, in the community). But I'm not exactly Matt Murdoch or Echo here.

And yes, I'm also "neuro-diverse" (starts with A) - and yes, I guess you could argue there's advantages there, under specific circumstances. But there's most definitely a penalty there.

[BeetleB]

I don't doubt your experience at all. The question I have for you is: Can you speak for all deaf people? I'm not saying everyone who is deaf is fine. But I do know that for many (even if a minority), it is fine, and it is different enough that they worry their kid will not have the experience they had, and may have a worse experience (in some ways) with hearing.

It's not a clear cut easy decision. I would say one should understand and respect the parents' decision. They know the factors way better than I do, and likely in many ways better than you do (especially as you don't know ASL).

I work with a deaf person (not born that way, but been that way most of her life). I'm sure she'd pay a hefty sum to get normal hearing - partially because her whole family (kids, etc) are not deaf. Even when she openly talks about the advantages of being deaf. If she did have a deaf child and chose treatment for her kid, I'd totally understand. But if she chose against it, I'd also totally understand.

What I don't get is people insisting they are totally wrong/evil for not pursuing the treatment for their kids. Almost always they don't understand the factors at play.

[dd82]

to be honest, you;'d have the same issues with that said magic wand and normalcy, because hearing aids do amplify sound and allow you to hear everythig.

You'd have the same issue, if not more, with background noise, group settings and context acquisition

Processing input is the hard part, if you're already having issues, that isn't going to go away