Gaining a sense of sound

THE STORY: With Ashton Hyman's hearing drastically impaired, his mother said she and her husband researched the option of a cochlear implant - a surgically implanted hearing aid that converts sound reaching the inner ear's cochlea into electrical impulses that are transmitted by wire to the auditory nerve.

THE LINK: www.oaoa.com/articles/electronic_19683___article.html/old_head.html

THE POLL: Do you think deaf children should be given the cochlear implant?
>> Yes: 89 percent (8 votes).
>> No: 11 percent (1 votes).

YOUR COMMENTS:
>> taxpayer19: "I know a young woman who has the cochlear implant and has done very well with it. When she first received it, her mother's biggest frustration was that no speech therapist in the Permian Basin area was trained to work with children who had the implant. She did see a therapit at the Permian Basin Rehab, but they were not very helpful. The mother purchased materials that the therapist and physician in Dallas recommended, but the therapist from the rehab never utiized it. Perhaps the reason Ms. Hollman doesn't see the results she thinks make it worthwhile, are partly because of the lack of trained speech theraists in this area."
>> Grover35: "To those that know nothing of Deaf culture these implants to make a child more like you is disgusting. Deafness is not something that needs to be fixed it's something that needs to be embraced. Are you really opening the world to the Deaf or are you closing the Deaf world off from them with these gadgets. Conformity is boring and dull. Embrace the diffreneces we all have and stop viewing Deaf and something that needs to be fixed. You can't decribe blue to the blind or a bird chirp to the Deaf just like I can't decribe the beauty of sign language or the richness of Deaf Culture to the ignorant hearing."