As a surgically implanted electrical device to assist recipients, particularly those suffering from severe hearing impairment, to access sound and achieve near-normal speech understanding by providing a sensation of sound in a In a relatively quiet acoustic environment, cochlear implants have always been controversial among deaf people, as well as hearing parents with deaf children. First of all because, although increasingly advanced technologies have been applied in the development and improvement of this device, it still cannot in any way be considered a cure for deafness. By directly stimulating the auditory nerve instead of amplifying the sound as much as possible with residual hearing, the implant processes digital signals through a wire equipped with many fewer electrodes corresponding to different signal frequencies than that of a functioning cochlea, resulting in inevitable hearing limitation and sound distortion. However, this is definitely a revolutionary improvement over old-school hearing aids. There is no denying that implants produce the facsimile of sound for those with severe hearing loss, thus providing a chance for deaf people, especially early deaf children who apparently have a much more promising chance of mastering spoken language, of thriving both in deaf community and the world of sound, which, as the main advantage, already has more reasons to overcome other potential drawbacks. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay According to the criteria established by the FDA, children aged one year or older who need such devices can benefit from a cochlear implant. Robert Ruben, former chairman of the Unified Department of Otolaryngology at Montefiore Medical, Center, informed. “Language, whatever it is, has to somehow get into the child's head quite early.” If you think about it, implantation at a young age actually makes a lot of sense since being exposed to sound during such a critical period of learning would greatly improve their chances of language acquisition and smoother assimilation into the world of hearing when they grow up. Furthermore, earlier in the beginning, they would have gone through intense post-operative speech and language therapy to get used to the implant without the involvement of substantial sunk costs, mostly present in implanted adults who have taken years of deviation by wearing hearing aids. Despite the fact that a cochlear implant can only provide 1%, give or take, of the hearing acuity of a well-functioning hearing system, basic understanding and communication with the outside world are still desirable for the vast majority living in silence. Therefore, to conclude, as long as candidates pass all the tests required by their audiologists and surgeons, they should be implanted as soon as possible. Having established the need to receive a cochlear implant for a child with severe hearing problems, is an optimal timing for the intervention possible or better calculated on a case-by-case basis when the recipients enter adulthood or adolescence? There are potential problems that come with that. First, how do you draw the line at which time a child is fully capable of making his or her own decisions? If the legal definition were the way to go, then in addition to missing the perfect window of language use, inevitably that young man/woman would already have become accustomed to living in the deaf community and would be reluctant to leave his or her comfort zone to deal with the situation the hassle of learninga new oral language with the risk of receiving sidelong glances every time he speaks. Since Rome is not built in a day, cochlear implant training is also not an easy job. Extensive practices are needed for a recipient to get the most optimized understanding from the device, fine-tuning and adjustments by audiologists during training also take a long time, as the sounds processed through the device might be unnatural at first, so they would twice or even more problematic for the recipient who is probably a full-time student or has a day job. Furthermore, even if it is not the primary concern for the person experiencing the disorder, the whole argument that surgery should wait until the child can decide whether or not to undergo it sounds very much like a false and bad faith statement that does not it is normal. best interests of the child for the simple reason that the perspective of someone who has spent more than 10 years engaging in the deaf community due to an inability to communicate comfortably with others must have gone through a seismic shift and been influenced by neutrality. As a matter of fact, the advantages of the cochlear implant are countless, first, the possibility of mastering oral language for a prelingually deaf child is surprisingly promising, at least at a level at which well-functioning individuals in the hearing world can be at a comfortable level. The intensity and difficulty of auditory therapy and training would also be mitigated for young students. If parents instead decide to wait until their children's consent is obtained, then they abandon their children to an arduous regimen of auditory therapy that is far less likely to lead to successful oral language skills, making the adoption of cochlear implant ineffective, for starters. With the cochlear implant, the recipient is able to bridge the culture between the deaf and hearing worlds rather than being left without choice and confined to the deaf community, regardless of his or her wishes. Not that there is anything wrong with any of the communities, but the ideal is always to have an alternative. Some children actually want an active social life with family, friends, classmates and work colleagues. Courtesy of the cochlear implant, improved speech perception is now available for them to expand career opportunities and participate in a learning environment more independently to experience increased confidence in life. And the list of benefits goes on, for example, increasing awareness of imminent dangers, such as being more alert to horns, sirens, fire alarms, etc. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper now from our expert writers. Get a Custom Essay Of course, the technology behind the device is certainly not perfect at this point, ineradicable background noise constantly annoying the wearer, destruction of residual hearing, and the relatively high costs of surgery and therapy that come after, but the burning issue that arouses ongoing controversy is mainly the discontent of the deaf community which targets the discrimination of the public in defining deafness as a disability. The cochlear implant debate is actually a supporting mechanism for a larger debate about assimilation versus alienation, about the extent to which the standardization of human populations is a laudable sign of progress, and about the extent to which it is eugenics poorly disguised. Instead of being.