Most hearing people don't understand why Deaf people prefer to stay deaf. The reason is that there is a rich culture that exists among Deaf people. They have a language and a history that most hearing people are almost entirely unaware of. Hearing people have a pathological view of those with hearing loss: they need to be fixed.
Many Deaf people would disagree. They view cochlear implants as the death of Deaf culture, the end of sign language. This clip from the film Sound and Fury shows very candidly the struggle one family goes through in their decision whether or not to give their child a cochlear implant:
Another aspect of this controversy is that implantation surgery is ideally performed before a child has developed speech. I personally worked with a seven-year-old who had received an implant, and implantation surgery is performed on children as young as 18 months. Opponents of the implant are markedly uncomfortable with the essentially bionic aspect of device; a group of Deaf people in Sound and Fury claim that cochlear implants will turn their children into robots. Many arguments state that the child should be old enough to understand the implications of getting the implant before undergoing the surgery. The unfortunate conundrum is that by the time the child is old enough to comprehend and decide for themselves, they have already lost years of critical speech development.
Some of the controversy has died down in the years since Sound and Fury was made, mostly due to the fact that 90% of children with hearing loss are born to hearing parents who have no experience with Deaf culture or history, parents who regard their child's deafness pathologically. In reality, the technology is not a miracle cure for deafness; the implant does not give the person hearing, but a diminished electronic facsimile thereof and many children with cochlear implants still benefit from sign language interpreters. The limitations of the device mean that there are often times when the wearer is still deaf (for example, the outer portion of the implant cannot get wet, so the wearer must take it off while showering and swimming). Another consideration is the risk posed by the surgery itself; in the process of preparing the cochlea for implantation, any residual hearing that may be enhanced by a non-invasive hearing aid is destroyed, leaving the wearer well and truly deaf for the rest of their lives – even if the implant is unsuccessful.
If you would like to hear more about the controversy, I highly recommend watching Sound and Fury in its entirety.
