Surgical Consent

Bioethics and Cochlear Implantation

Edited by Linda Komesaroff

Imprint: Gallaudet University Press
Ebook : 9781563683862, 208 pages, September 2009
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Table of contents

Contents
Foreword
Contributors
Introduction
Linda Komesaroff
1.  Cochlear Implantation, Colonialism, and Deaf Rights
Paddy Ladd
2. Consent to Surgery for Deaf Children: Making Informed Decisions
Priscilla Alderson
3. Ethnicity, Ethics, and the Deaf-World
Harlan Lane
4. Parents, Children, and Medical Treatment: Legal Rights and Responsibilities
Eithne Mills
5. Media Representation and Cochlear Implantation
Linda Komesaroff
6. The Psychosocial Development of Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants
Gunilla Preisler
7. Cochlear-Implanted Children in Sweden's Bilingual Schools: Making It Work
Kristina Svartholm
8. A Study of Norwegian Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children: Equality in Communication Inside
and Outside Family Life
Hilde Haualand and Inger Lise Skog Hansen
9. Freedom of Speech for Deaf People
Paal Richard Peterson
10. Deaf Australians and the Cochlear Implant: Reporting from Ground Level
Karen Lloyd and Michael Uniacke
 
 

Description

With the rate of cochlear implantation reaching 80% to 90% of all deaf children, some as young as five months old, Surgical Consent: Bioethics and Cochlear Implantation arrives at a critical juncture. This comprehensive collection features essays by Priscilla Alderson, Inger Lise Skog Hansen, Hilde Haualand, volume editor Linda Komesaroff, Paddy Ladd, Harlan Lane, Karen Lloyd, Eithne Mills, Paal Richard Peterson, Gunilla Preisler, Kristina Svartholm, and Michael Uniacke. These worldwide renowned ethicists, educators, and Deaf leaders express their diverse perspectives on the bioethics of childhood cochlear implantation according to their discipline and a number of themes of inquiry: human rights, medical and social ethics, psychology, education, globalization, identity, life pathways, democracy, media, law, and biotechnology.

       Drawing on current research, this volume presents the varying reactions around the globe to the high rate of implantation. These views contrast sharply with the medical perspective of deafness overwhelmingly promoted through the media and by the cochlear implantation industry. At the same time, the contributors aim to disrupt the binaries that have long dominated the field of deafness — speech versus sign, instruction through speech and sign systems versus bilingual education, and medical intervention versus cultural membership in the Deaf community.

       Surgical Consent begins and ends with the voices of Deaf people. Their articulate and, at times, raw insights clearly delineate the issues of power, positioning, and minority-majority group relations that are inherent in the dominant hearing culture’s understanding of diversity and globalization.

 

Linda Komesaroff is a senior lecturer at Deakin University in Australia.