Karthik's musings

Is it ethical to make make your child deaf?

A very thought-provoking article in today's Independent on the right of a deaf couple to have a deaf child throgh IVF treatment. I'm astounded by this question: Can a deaf couple decide that they want the child to be deaf? Have we not been told since ages that deafness is a disability? If, as the couple argues, it is on the same lines as been mentally retarded, can a parent then choose to have a mentally retarded child? Is it really as simple, and as equivalent, as been Jewish or black?

The jury, in my mind, is still out on that.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.
- Charlie Chaplin