with an advent of genetic engineering
the global deaf community is facing an
existential crisis that begs a question
for the world, are deaf people and sign
languages worth preserving? to answer the question yes 100%, but that does not mean
I don't have any questions. Diversity as a
whole is worth preserving. diverse
perspectives, experiences skills, thinking,
all fuel innovation. What's not what's
preserving is the idea that perfection
is something that is a one-size-fits-all.
life is different for everyone. The wants
and needs are different, opinions and
emotions are different and that isn't
something that can be bred out of
society. I mean who is in charge of
deciding what the perfect line of genes
look like because I can guarantee you
that I already disagree since I have
friends who are deaf, friends with deaf
and hard-of-hearing children and a
friend who's sister is profoundly deaf and
I can tell you that I could not and
would not change them for the world
because to me they are pretty ideal.
That's not to say that others might look
at them as something that needs to be
fixed. So no matter what, there's already
a dissonance on what a perfect
human should look like. Then we can bring up the topic of breeding heritage genes
like eye shape, or height, skin colors.
genetics is truly a fascinating subject
but deciding what perfection looks like
is not a topic that will ever be settled
maybe we should focus on breeding humans
that create a world built around diverse
needs capabilities and ideals that work
for more people rather than creating a
perfect human to exist in a very
narrow-minded world. Besides nature
always wins
there will always being mutations. look
at dog breeding. purebred dogs have a long list of genetic health issues. so who's
to say when this genetic engineering is
complete. on the other hand I could see
why some deaf people would opt for this
treatment. If one became deaf later on in
their lives they would probably want it
to be reversed, I could see that. if a
couple with a gjb2 gene didn't want to
put their child through the possible
hardships that they had to endure
growing up, I could see that, but with
that being said the Deaf have a very full
history and have overcome many obstacles
the community values each other they
value the language and they respect each
other this has evolved from struggle of
the historic and systemic forcing
into an unaccommodating world. those
combined and continued struggles provide
the value of what it means to be human
the humility, the lost, love and the pride
of overcoming. genetic engineering can
potentially breed the humanity out of
the human. it is crazy that it is even a
topic, but at the same time I think it's
about a discussion it forces people to
consider the very real question of, if it
can be fixed should we fix it? but
history also tells us that fixing things
that aren't necessarily broken, fixing
things for the sake of normalization or
confirmation of status quo isn't really
facing things it's just making something
that is unique and different into
something that is not. humans want to
create a better everything, look at
genetic modification for our food
sources, is that are really an
improvement we can even get into the
Nazis and their belief in the Aryan
Nation, is it really that much of an
improvement to have everyone blonde hair, blue eyes.
I mean we can go on and on about the
persecution of minority populations. it's
been happening forever just as it
continues to happen. so maybe it's not a
crazy thing to discuss, but I'm 100% for
the preservation of the deaf people and
their language
