Cochlear Implants, Deafness and an Episode of CSI

A few months ago someone made an off-hand remark about cochlear implants that really bothered me. This person said after having the implant for four years, my friend Bren "should hear and understand speech better" than he does. If he would make more of an effort to hear, he could. I tried to explain that not everyone with an implant is the same. No matter how long someone's had a cochlear implant, it may not benefit one person to the extent it does another. So many factors are involved and hearing is nothing like vision. One can't just put on a hearing aid or cochlear implant and expect to have perfect hearing, especially if the person using the hearing device was born deaf or pre-lingually deaf. This person didn't seem to understand, nor did they seem to want to understand. And that, my friends, is the biggest problem people with hearing loss and deafness face in this world: the Hearing World's Attitude.

On an episode of CSI a few years back Gil Grissom and company investigated the murder of a deaf college student. Warrick and Sidle were assigned to interview the Dean at the local college for the deaf. The Dean herself was deaf. After a failed attempt to interview the Dean and being kicked out of her office (they kept looking at the interpreter while speaking and not her), they commented to Grissom that she'd been extremely rude and seemed to have something against them because they could hear. The following are quotes from the episode, Sounds of Silence:

Gil Grissom: "How'd it go at the college?"
Sara Sidle: "They're not cooperating."
Warrick Brown: "Yeah, we didn't have a warrant, so she kicked us out."
Gil Grissom: "What did you do?"
Sara Sidle "What did we do? We met with the president, asked a few questions."
Warrick Brown: "She was kind of hostile."
Sara Sidle: "Like it's our fault we can hear."
Episode: (Sounds of Silence)

"Well, the president of the college is a real whack job."
"Sara, you see deafness as a pathology. For Dr. Gilbert, her deafness is not her handicap -- it's her way of life."
-- Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom (Sounds of Silence)

"You don't need to hear or speak to communicate..."
-- Gil Grissom (Sounds of Silence)