The Silencing of the Deaf

How high-tech implants are being blamed for killing an entire subculture.

Eleanor Reid was two days old when a tech tested her cochlea. The screening is routine for all newborns, and ideally it’s conducted while the baby sleeps. Ellie sucked on a pacifier coated in sugar water, but her blue eyes remained wide open as the tech inserted tiny earbuds into her ears and played her a prolonged tone. The cochlea should echo the tone back into the earbuds, but the machine registered nothing. Many newborns don’t pass the screening, the tech told Ellie’s parents, Christine and Derek. Sometimes a baby’s cries interfere with the test, sometimes fluid in the ears is the problem.

By the time Ellie’s audiologist appointment rolled around three weeks later, Derek was back at work as a foreman. Christine told him not to bother taking time off. She wasn’t worried. To make sure Ellie slept, she didn’t breastfeed until the appointment. Ellie’s howls of hunger reverberated off the walls as Christine rushed around the Braintree Rehabilitation Center in suburban Boston in search of the right office. Once there, Ellie nursed and promptly fell asleep, while nurses tested her inner…