Hearing Impairment Case Study

Is it morally permissible for a deaf couple to select for a deaf child? Would it be acceptable if the preimplantation genetic diagnosis provides the opportunity and hearing impaired parents choose to have a child with hearing disability? Some people draw parallels with intentionally harming a baby, e.g. depriving the child of his/her hearing sense . Thus, they say, it is unethical. Some people argue that by choosing the child with disability it harms the society . However, ethical considerations for this problems becomes difficult when it is difficult to decide what is a disability. Deaf community often argues that hearing impairment is a culture, thus it should be permitted to choose a child with the same culture as them3. Therefore, one

The deaf community justified their action as a cultural preference. There disabled people consider themselves as a minority, they find depriving their right to have a deaf child discriminating. One should be aware of difference between psychology of deafened person and inborn deaf person. In case 1, hearing impaired person most likely will not consider himself as a minority, but as a disabled person, a person deprived from his previous ability to hear. In case 2, the person was deaf from birth and he/she learned the world through the means he or she was provided by nature. The impairment is his inherent and defining characteristic, just like his ethnicity and nationality. As such, deafness can also be said to be socially imposed harm, when society is overly conscious of them. Although forbidding to choose child based on hearing disability might be a better choice for a society, as it certainly has more benefits to have a healthy person than impaired in some cases3. However, depriving their right to have the children of the same cultural traits would be neglecting the feelings of the minority. On the other hand, if gene treatment or gene screening succeeds, it will lead to demise of deaf community. Thus, deliberately depriving their rights can be considered as a genocide. Based on previous paragraph, on could also claim that doing so is declining the right for freedom of choice,

It is a controversial topic as some people argue that it is unnatural - thus unethical. Assuming that all that is against the nature is wrong, would it not mean that saving a person is also unnatural. Inaction in this case would be natural way, therefore ethical thing to do. The practice shows that it is unethical to be inactive when a person is in a danger, otherwise there would not have been a law that punishes for inaction. It does not mean that inaction is wrong, but only it question where the boundaries should lie. Some argue that it is against Christianity. Nonetheless, holy books does not have an explicitly written text about genetic screening. The arguments are only constructed from implications of the holy texts. As the holy texts might hold many different meanings, who can know for sure, if genetic screening is just or unjust way? As this topic is very complicated dilemma and needs a further debates to come to a common consensus, one should consider two outcomes: when it is morally accepted and when it is condemned as unethical thing to do. In the latter case, the choice of screening out a deaf child de facto would be unethical, as it would employ unethical means to reach the result. This paper would focus on the former case due to limitations of this papers