In her third blog posts themed around our You Choose exhibition, research assistant Dr Claire Turner explores the taste of personalised pills.
In the latest of our blog posts linked to the You Choose exhibition, research assistant Dr. Claire Turner explores the past and future of a piece of medical technology that has been called both miraculous and controversial.
With You Choose highlighting some of the ways that technology allows for a more personalised medical future, we’ve also been updating some of the museum’s other galleries to reflect this theme. For our Normal + Me gallery this has meant adding a new display all about cochlear implants. The museum has long been known for its collection of hearing aids and amplification devices. Until now, cochlear implants were only a small feature of these displays. Now, they take the spotlight!
So, what is a cochlear implant? A cochlear implant is an electronic device which is surgically ‘implanted’ into the cochlea, or the inner ear, of people who are profoundly deaf to simulate the experience of sound. Unlike a hearing aid, which amplifies sound, a cochlear implant bypasses the hearing part of the ear to stimulate the auditory nerve electrically. The first cochlear implant was developed in 1957 by André Djourno and Charles Eyriès, but the implant we know and use today was first implanted in 1977 and approved by the FDA in the 1980s. As of July 2022, over one million cochlear implants are in use worldwide.
While for many people a cochlear implant can be a ‘miracle’, for others, it is seen as an affront to the Deaf community. Many Deaf people believe that deafness is not a condition that requires a ‘cure’. At the same time, however, many cochlear implant users believe they are still part of the Deaf community and can retain their Deaf identity alongside being a part of the hearing world.
A cochlear implant from the new display
One of the more controversial conversations surrounding cochlear implants relates to their use in young children with profound hearing loss. In 2020, the FDA approved cochlear implants for use in children from nine months old. By implanting the device at a young age, children are exposed to sounds at just the right time for developing their speech and language skills. There are around 52,798 deaf children across the UK, an increase of 2% since 2021. The 2021 CRIDE (Consortium for Research in Deaf Education) report highlights that around 77% of severely and profoundly deaf children have at least one cochlear implant.
Some Deaf activists have gone so far as to label this implantation of children as a form of ‘cultural genocide’. This is because children with cochlear implants are more likely to receive education through spoken language and listening as opposed to sign language. As a result, many children do not learn to sign or mix with Deaf children who do use sign language, creating what has been described as a cultural divide and an erasure of young Deaf identity.
90-95% of Deaf children are born to hearing families. CRIDE 2022 reports that 53% of services neither provide, fund, nor commission courses for families to learn British Sign Language (BSL), meaning Deaf children struggle to communicate and develop a sense of community. Many cochlear implant users are fighting to change this.
As with all of the Normal + Me gallery, our cochlear implant display was put together by working with people with lived experience of the issues discussed, in this case cochlear implant users from a diverse variety of backgrounds. As part of this process, we asked eight implant users to talk about their Deaf identities, from children and young adults who have used implants since infancy to more recent implant users. Despite being able to hear, all our volunteers still consider themselves to be part of the Deaf community. Many of them hope to bridge the gap between the Deaf and hearing worlds by learning BSL and promoting Deaf awareness.
Kara (@cochlearkaz) is one of the people featured in the new display. A Scottish social media content creator who has used cochlear implants since the age of 3, Kara uses her platform to promote Deaf awareness.
You can hear Kara, Elise, Sanemi, Jake, Yasir, Charlotte, Mark and Anna here. When listening to the recordings, you will hear a variety of voices, regional accents, and dialect. People who are profoundly deaf often develop strong regional accents as a result of reading lip patterns and mouth movements. These voice recordings celebrate the diversity of the Deaf community.
So, what’s next? Technicians and scientists are constantly developing new ways to change how Deaf people hear. Despite their success, cochlear implants are continually being developed in new ways. This includes the invention of new speech processors and increasingly discrete methods of implanting the device. Scientists hope to one day create a totally implantable cochlear implant (TICI), which will not include an external component, making it invisible to the naked eye. Do you think this will change the way implant users identify themselves?