Did you know that a cure can instigate a cultural change? Not just any cure however, but a cure to deafness and even possibly a cure to being gay. Full disclosure, I learned a little sign language and a little bit about deaf culture back in college. As to members of the gay community, I have nothing against them either as I have some gay friends who are really awesome people. This issue is meant to discuss how a cure for deafness and this alleged cure for "gayness" has an effect and a push back from the members of those communities.
Cure for the deaf: Depending on how you became deaf, there is an implant that can be placed onto your brain that controls hearing. Once installed, a deaf person can actually hear. It works best on people who lost their hearing due to accidents or disease later in life as they will be better able to comprehend sound. The technology also works great for young children as their brains are still developing and as such will be able to make sense of the sounds they are hearing later on (A child as young as 3 has gotten the implant and you can find the video of him hearing for the first time online). But the deaf community is concerned. They fear that their unique culture and even members of the deaf community will be eradicated by this technology.
Deaf backlash: Members of the deaf community have their own language known as sign language with each country having its own unique version. They have deaf jam concerts that use sound with high vibrations that allow them to feel sound rather than hear it. Turning lights on and off in a room, and tapping some one on the shoulder to get their attention is also apart of the deaf culture. But parents who can hear with children who are deaf want their children to be able to hear. Most deaf children are in fact born to hearing parents and so the deaf community is worried. With a shrinking community, it becomes harder to maintain a culture, let alone an identity. As such, some deaf individuals have taken legal action when and where they can to block or stifle this great technology. Let us face it, a cultural identity that was developed out of outright discrimination (deaf children were abused in schools by tying their hands to their chairs, and they found it hard to get a job due to their unique condition) is hard to give up. But this becomes an issue of choice for parents of the deaf and for those who at one time could hear but now cannot.
Cure for gayness: While I wouldn't call it an actual cure, it is more like they discovered what hormones cause a person to be attracted to the same sex. Apparently, as the science is not all there yet, at a specific point in development in a child's life certain hormones are released that dictate what sex a child will be attracted to. Thus, some scientists believe they can fix this "chemical" imbalance at that stage in development so that the child "never becomes gay." Gays have taken action to protect themselves and their community from eradication, as they call upon civil rights lawyers to block the "early detection" of gayness. Why block the early detection (which I find myself agreeing with)? This is because, if you can detect if a person is gay, deaf, autistic, blind, or any other unique circumstance, a parent may abort that baby. That is right, rather than raise the child as is and overcoming those challenges, a parent may give up and just kill the child before the child is born. As such early detection of gayness has become a target for banning as a medical practice. And I agree with the gay community, no child should be killed before they are born because they are gay, or deaf or anything for that manor (but this is because I'm pro-life). However, this does not stop scientists from adjusting children's hormones to prevent attraction to people of the same sex; it does get stifled a little bit.
Conclusion: A cure can drastically harm a culture or even eliminate it in the case of gay and deaf communities as they are slowly eradicated through technology. While I have no doubt that parental discrimination of an unborn baby will be banned in certain instances in the
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