Here’s a great example of how science works. Take this woman, who has been deaf her whole life. Prayer wouldn’t help her a bit, but science did, and it’s awesome science. I hadn’t really known much about cochlear implants until the video below video went viral, and was sent to me by several readers. Now I’ve learned some, and I’m mighty impressed.
First, the description from CBS News:
An amazing caught-on-tape moment shows a 40-year-old British woman who had been deaf her whole life hearing for the first time.
Joanne Milne was deaf due to Usher syndrome, a genetic condition that causes hearing loss but also affects vision. About 3 to 6 percent of children who are deaf have the syndrome, according to theNational Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
After being fitted with two cochlear implants, friend Tremayne Crossley posted a YouTube videoof Milne hearing the days of the week read to her — the first words she’d ever heard.
“The switch-on was the most emotional and overwhelming experience of my life and I’m still in shock now,” she told the BBC.
From the BBC News:
In an interview with BBC WM, her mother Ann said: “She is just overwhelmed by it all.
“To be able to hear footsteps and we went out for a meal and she said she could actually hear the clinking of the plate when she was eating. Things we just take for granted.”
As a result of the transformation, Ms Milne’s friend Tremayne Crossley decided to make her a compilation of songs – selecting one track from each year of her life.
He then sent the compilation to BBC 6 Music radio presenter Lauren Laverne.
After the playlist was featured on the show this week, Ms Laverne tweeted: “Just watched a video of today’s #Memory Tape recipient having her cochlear implant turned on and hearing for the first time. Studio in floods.”
Wikipedia describes the parts, which also describes how it works:
The implant is surgically placed under the skin behind the ear. The basic parts of the device include:
- External:
- one or more microphones which picks up sound from the environment
- a speech processor which selectively filters sound to prioritize audible speech, splits the sound into channels and sends the electrical sound signals through a thin cable to the transmitter,
- a transmitter, which is a coil held in position by a magnet placed behind the external ear, and transmits power and the processed sound signals across the skin to the internal device by electromagnetic induction,
- Internal:
The internal part of a cochlear implant (model Cochlear Freedom 24 RE)
- a receiver and stimulator secured in bone beneath the skin, which converts the signals into electric impulses and sends them through an internal cable to electrodes,
- an array of up to 22 electrodes wound through the cochlea, which send the impulses to the nerves in the scala tympani and then directly to the brain through the auditory nerve system. There are 4 manufacturers for cochlear implants, and each one produces a different implant with a different number of electrodes. The number of channels is not a primary factor upon which a manufacturer is chosen; the signal processing algorithm is also another important block.
Now these things won’t help everyone (you have to have a functioning auditory nerve, for example, the devices are not always effective, and they’re expensive: up to $100,000. Further, they’re opposed by some segments of the deaf community who regard their deafness as a bonding condition that is threatened by restoring their ability to hear. I’ve strived mightily over the years to understand this attitude, but I can’t really fathom it. But of course I’m not deaf. I just imagine that if I were, I’d want to hear, just as Joanne Milne wanted to, as well as the many other deaf or poorly-hearing people who acquire this device.
What I don’t understand is how she can say that the sound is high. Never having heard sounds before, how is she able to tell what is a high pitch and what is a low pitch?
Perhaps she is comparing the speaker’s voice with her own.
By the way, it did occur to me that the problem may not just be one of ‘adjustment.’ The medical assistant (?) has a pleasant but rather high voice.
I wonder what the woman would have said if she had been introduced to the sound of the human voice as spoken by James Earl Ray?
Or James Earl Jones. 😉
Fer sure.
Duh. Yes.
*blush*
I am so happy that Mr. Jones never went into politics. It wouldn’t matter what his policy; with his Voice, I’d have no choice but to vote blindly for him.
Here is, for me, the definitive narration of Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait. Yes, Mr. Lincoln himself had an high and reedy tenor voice, but Mr. Jones’s portrait of Copland’s Lincoln is the only one that does justice to the President’s true stature.
Cheers,
b&
Lincoln, who kept a book in his hip pocket, every moment he could reading it (out of sight of his apparently Philistine father) when he wasn’t having to put his nose to the grindstone of arduous manual labor, whether on behalf of his father or on behalf of whomever he hired out his son’s labor.
I wonder if the details of the CBS report are completely accurate. Cochlear implants are often successful in (very) young children as well as in adults who once had good hearing. Adults who have never heard at all, however, have a hard time adapting to a CI, as the mature, not-so-flexible brain has to learn to interpret the signals from the auditory nerve . Clearly the woman is merely overwhelmed by hearing “something rather than nothing”, while perhaps she can not make much of it. On the other hand I also wouldn’t be surprised if she actually has had (some) hearing at a young age, for instance if she has Usher type II or III (see Wikipedia).
Anyway, yes, this is what science has to offer, whereas all what religion comes up with is (as the priest famously said to Beethoven) “In heaven you will hear again”.
My impression too. She speaks too well to have been entirely deaf all her life.
I agree. Two members of my family have cochlear implants, one an adult who had normal hearing as a child. Reaction suggests that she has heard in the past.
When my daughter was turned on she answered my shout to my wife from upstairs to down and that brought tears to my eyes.
It really is a life changing procedure.
This was suggested on the BBC 24 hour news prog yesterday, the point being that she spoke with a discernible Geordie accent. If she had never heard other voices this would seem unlikely.
The consensus was that she may well have had some hearing ability as a child.
Still, I for one, like (I hope) most people, am happy for her. Watching her listening to the sea-birds was heart-warming.
Hope she gets to enjoy the music.
My first thought too. Unless the subject had already a degree of residual hearing she she would have no point of reference or experience in discriminating and identifying pitch. I’m a music teacher and my experience is that many hearing children need to be taught the skill.
The subject initially described the sound as said “very high”. But supplied no term for the subject of her observation. I suspect that the technician initially presumed the subject was referring to pitch when she was in fact describing volume (I imagine all new sound perceived for the very first time might be overwhelming). Later in the piece the subject appears to use the words pitch, but this may be a case of confirmation bias as she adopts the technician’s term for what she is experiencing.
I’ve found that non-musicians, especially young ones, confuse “high” and “loud.” I think at least part of this comes from the common language of “turning the volume up.” If the volume is “up,” the sound must be “high,” no?
It can also be quite remarkable to listen to somebody try to sing higher only to sing louder, even when attempting to imitate a coach. I’ve also personally fought that problem with beginning (as in, never touched it before) trumpet players. I’m sure a skilled elementary music educator knows exactly how to overcome that sort of misunderstanding, though.
Cheers,
b&
This was my first thought. I’m sure to someone who has never heard before, the distinction between volume and pitch is difficult if not impossible to explain. A bit like trying to explain hues to the blind.
So her first time hearing and the woman is speaking very loudly for the sake of clarity. She interprets this jarring volume as “high.”
How does one learn how to speak without having ever heard speech before?
b&
Deaf people often do speak. They mimic mouth movements and feel the movement/vibrations in their throat, I think. Speech therapists can work with the deaf.
It isn’t easy to teach a born-deaf person to speak, but it can be done. Google “teach deaf to speak”.
Usually their words sound slurred, and they might emphasize the wrong word, or they speak in a monotone.
My mother was not born deaf, but after she lost her hearing her speech began to deteriorate. After she got a cochlear implant her speech slowly improved.
Deaf people can be very noisy too. They aren’t used to hearing things so they bang stuff around all the time. I’ve known a couple of personal examples of this.
How does one understand the speech of someone else right off the bat?
Um. Much better question!
I think I’d start my speculation with mirror neurons, and her “hearing” herself speak.
But I’d be much more interested in actually knowing the real answer….
b&
I would guess lip reading, but AIUI lip reading is very difficult and not practical as the sole method of communication.
I saw this a few days ago. I cried with her.
Some moments in life are just so overwhelmingly wonderful.
Same here.
The wonders of science and technology.
Sitting here crying the ugly cry… snot and all. Amazing stuff.
I read a true story (or was it a documentary I saw?) about a man who had been blind from infancy and through an operation at the age of 40 was able to see for the very first time. But this did not turn out as well as the example in the OP.
Because his brain had developed without any of the normal internal connections for sight, the world was immensely confusing to him. He could technically see — but nothing made any sense. It was too much, all at once. And very, very stressful.
After a month or so of therapy, the man’s capacity for recognizing what he was observing improved, but it was still a huge intellectual and mental effort. His life wasn’t easier. When he just wanted to relax and enjoy himself, he’d close his eyes. Now familiar things were familiar … instead of all … twisted and strange.
Eventually, he refused to continue with the surgery and drugs which had restored his sight and gradually and gratefully became blind again.
I’m assuming it’s easier to adjust and then appreciate sound when you’ve been deaf. Is this the reason for the “Deaf Positive” Movement or whatever it is? I doubt it, since as I understand it the people who are most adamantly against restoring hearing don’t seem to mention ‘confusion’ as a problem. It’s more an identity thing.
Perhaps Sastra is referring to the essay “To See and Not See” from the book “An Anthropologist on Mars” by Oliver Sacks. It’s a very interesting study that makes one “see” that sight occurs in the brain, and not the eyes. The essay also provides a detailed history of similar accounts, and one learns that the disorientation and generally less-than-unalloyed-good results from sight restoration are not at all unusual.
I would not be surprised if there are similar downsides to analogous cases with hearing restoration. At the very least, such people may want to “tune out” and escape the incessant sound and noise of the modern world. However, since their brains already know language and the physical effects of sound waves (vibrations), I wouldn’t think that the adjustment would be anywhere as difficult as it is for newly-sighted people.
I tell elementary students – especially 5th graders – and they are in total disbelief – that sooner or later there will come a day when they will want to sit still and be absolutely quiet.
There are days when I wish to be delivered from the sonic chaos of certain of these chatterboxes, and of the world in general. Could they rest their voices if their lives depended on it?
Nevertheless, regarding the lady in question, and the joyful response of posters here, to quote William Blake:
“Excess of Sorrow laughs;
Excess of Joy weeps.”
Were she to allow me to impose on her privacy, I would rejoice with her in her first hearing of, e.g., “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini,” or Dvorak’s “New World Symphony,” or Masennet’s (?)”Pan and the Birds” or Debussy’s “Reverie” or “Claire de Lune,” or Schumann’s “Kinderscenen” (sp.?), or a host of other such gorgeous melodies.
Silence is something I absolutely need. I suspect it is a combo of introversion and dyscalculia. If things are noisy I get angry.
Yes, I’ve read Sack’s Anthropologist on Mars so that is probably where I came across the sad tale of the man who preferred to be blind.
Last season one of the contestants for “Project Runway” was a man who had been born deaf and could hear a bit through some hearing aids (the show also provided him with an interpreter who did sign language.) He admitted to the camera that when the drama going on around him got to be too much he would just turn his hearing aids off and concentrate on his work. He laughed at that: it was like a secret power.
My mom had a deaf friend that could hear a bit with a hearing aid. She signed and read lips usually. She hated the hearing aid because everything was noisy.
Also the 1999 film “At first sight,” based on the true story as told by Oliver Sacks.
In 2005 Oliver lost the sight in one eye with an ocular melanoma.
I remember when my mother got her cochlear implant. Things sounded weird at first, but after a couple of weeks things sounded normal. Her brain had to adjust.
“Prayer wouldn’t help her a bit, but science did,”
I’m sure some people might claim that this was god, working his will through science. god takes credit for EVERYTHING!
And let’s not forget, he also made that woman deaf.
One wonders what proportion of the engineers and medical technician who developed the various types of cochlear implants were atheists, animists, Wiccans or even [different to the target audience] christians of some stripe?
Can I blame god for the stomach cramps and let the medics have the credit for the anti-malarial drugs?
I assume that this is another benefit of socialised medicine?
I assume you drive your car on socialised roads.
psst… judging on how Genghis spelt “socialised”, my initial guess would be that the question isn’t Amer’kin snark.
Apparently so. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) is an NHS hospital. Lucky for us too, that science itself is largely a socialised affair.
Right.
The funding and risk is socialiSed;
The profit therefrom is privatiSied,
at least in the U.S.
“Government is the shadow cast by Business.”
– John Dewey
Such an excellent quote… for a commie. 😉
Over time all medicine becomes socialized, in the sense that what transcends at the top (radical cancer treatment, advanced radiation therapy, targeted madications, early detection methods, etc.) ultimately transform the bottom (low priced medications, advanced treatment for daily emergency care, etc.)
In America, medical services for everyone are equal to the highest level of anyone less than fifty years ago and in many cases, most everyone sees benefits that are not much older than twenty years old.
It might be unfortunate that some will not benefit from all of the benefits of some super technology today, but if today’s socio-econmic traditions are any predictor: everyone will eventually benefit from what becomes possible.
Incidentally everytime I see someone hear for the first time it is unavoidable emotional.
“It might be unfortunate that some will not benefit from all of the benefits of some super technology today, but if today’s socio-econmic traditions are any predictor: everyone will eventually benefit from what becomes possible.”
“Unfortunate” doesn’t seem sufficiently descriptive in this situation.
She’s crying in frustration because she realizes that she could have and her hearing restored years ago if only she had given money to Benny Hinn!
Because god in his infinite wisdom has decreed that the purpose of creation is more money for Benny Hinn!
The cochlear implants are pretty cool. You don’t get hearing like people who are not deaf have but it is amazingly great to have it! Your brain apparently makes up for whatever isn’t quite right – I’ve heard people describe voices as robotic at first but that goes away with use (these were people with hearing in one ear – perhaps those with deafness in both ears wouldn’t have a frame of reference for how voices sound). A former boss of mine (a great lady) had a brain tumour removed which caused loss of hearing in one ear and she got a cochlear implant. Also Malala has one to correct her deafness from the bullet.
If you look on YouTube there are a number of recipients of these implants hearing for the first time. To see the look on a child’s face when it hears for the first time is utterly moving.
I am born deaf, wear BTE hearing aids and do speak. I get asked why I don’t get a CI. Why can’t you accept me for who I am? It’s not a cure for deafness. It’s just a powerful hearing aid applied by surgery. I wonder, if a chip implanted in certain part of human brain would make gay people straight, how many would be willing to be implanted? Would society demand gay people be implanted? Would it be similar to how babies are tested and implanted with CI nowadays? My issue with implanted children is they are not being taught to read lips which makes them completely dependent on CI. CI, like all machines, do break down.
Now, lithotripsy is awesome, thanks to science! Used it for my third stone.
Chill catsto, we won’t force a CI on you. You’re cool as is! 🙂
Maybe you can explain how Milne was able to understand speech of the other person immediately?
*the speech*
Wasn’t she lip-reading?
That would be my first guess except that, as I remarked above, I’ve read that lip reading is very difficult and not very reliable.
Catsto,
“Why can’t you accept me for who I am?”
We totally accept you as you are, including all your kidney stones, and your BTE hearing aids as well. Perhaps you should think twice before comparing certain sexual orientations with losing a sense.
As someone who was BORN this way, I DIDN’T LOSE a sense. But do foresee a future where implanting to make someone a certain way could happen as it’s already happening to those who are BORN without a certain sense. Get it?
OK, I should have avoided the word ‘losing’. As you know for deaf-born persons the CI should be implanted as soon as possible, otherwise the result will be poor. If you don’t chose for an operation, you chose for the baby to remain mostly deaf. In both cases the care-takers decide for the baby.
Can you give one example (apart from quarantining in case of infectious diseases) where medical treatments are force upon people? In my part of the world, not even vaccination is mandatory, I wish it were.
So so great.
Science is cool.
re “you have to have a functioning auditory nerve, for example,” and “But of course I’m not deaf.”
I am. Left ear. Totally dead. Since in utero. Teratogenic. Since rubella, full – bore disease, not just exposure, to and in my mother during gestation.
With resultant agenesis of the left eighth cranial nerve.
Also resultant vestibular screw – up in addition to complete, one – sided deafness: thus, episodic, unpredictable and sudden onset of Meneire’s syndrome / labyrinthitis. Possible anywhere including while driving a vehicle but always with an aura and upwards of ~120 seconds’ worth of time to pull over to the side of the road. And vomit.
Another such individual has, his entire life, described one – sided, total deafness as more difficult to navigate out in society than bilateral total deafness: “People ‘expect’ you … … to be able, because you can, some, … … they expect you to be able to hear — all.”
I cannot.
People become mightily impatient and, because of that, their own impatience, mightily … … rude.
Blue
didn’t know rubella did that to the fetus. I had rubella as a baby. My grandmother was deaf in one ear because of a bad childhood ear infection. Diseases that seem like nothing now can really be damaging.
That sucks about the vomiting. I get that with migraines sometimes.
The reason Hellen Keller was deaf and blind was a Rubella infection in her mother while pregnant.
wow, rubella is nasty.
Fortunately we have immunisations now to stop it. I wonder if the anti-vaxxers will achieve a renaissance of deaf and blind babies. 🙁
probably. 🙁 I got my MMR vaccine tues. My stupid immune system gave me aches and migraines but it is better than measles.
Why so late with the MMR?
That said, I’m working on the assumption that I’ve had measles at some time ; I can remember having mumps. So I don’t need to worry about them. I’ll have to find out now if rubella is actually a disease that men can get … although I’ve always known that it was a disease mostly of concern to girls and women. (“always” in the sense of “I can’t remember learning that”)
[quote=”Wikipedia”]In the UK, there remains a large population of men susceptible to rubella who have not been vaccinated. Outbreaks of rubella occurred amongst many young men in the UK in 1993 and in 1996 the infection was transmitted to pregnant women, many of whom were immigrants and were susceptible.[/quote]OK, so that makes it fairly clear that it’s not a sex-linked infection.
You should try the rabies prophylaxis vaccine – my doses of that were pretty much the grimmest vaccines I can remember.
It’s still got rabies beaten for an experience though.
MMR vaccine didn’t exist when I was a child. This is why I got rubella. I may have been vaccinated for measles and mumps but I couldn’t find records that said so. It used to be that you were considered ok because of herd immunity and the nurse at my doctor’s office tried to say I was probably immune but since there was no record, I opted to get the vaccine instead of getting blood work first to test my immunity. There was a measles case reported in the tone where I work and herd immunity is waning if not lost in a lot of areas so I thought I’d get the jab.
Yeah … I was thinking such thought as I ambled towards the pub last night.
What does my vaccination passport tell me? Cholera (of course), Yellow fever (until 2024), 3 doses of rabies, Hep A x2, Hep B x3, Typhoid x2, Polio (Oh, that’s just expired! And I’ve been working where Islamists murder vaccine workers! I shall get that sorted post-haste!) ; some tick-borne encephalitis, Diptheria / Polio/ Tetanus ; (OK, covered) and 4 sub-types of meningococcal meningitis.
I think I’ll go and talk to the quack about the MMR.
:). There is a measles case where my parents live that tom what I deduce was from an unvaccinated child as the listed places visited included a trampoline place. After I posted the article on Facebook one of my friends (the father of a toddler) asked me if he and his wife should get vaccinated. I told him, if you aren’t sure about your vaccination history, it won’t hurt to do so!
There may be certain specific instances in which you wouldn’t want to get vaccinated twice. But not only would those be exceedingly rare, that’s what you pay your primary care physician to know.
If in the slightest doubt, make an appointment to discuss it with your doctor with the assumption that you’ll almost certainly be rolling up your sleeve before you leave the office.
b&
Yeah in this case I was more the insistent one and when the nurse couldn’t find my records I could get the blood test buy she said with MMR there is no worry if you get re-vaccinated so out of purely not wanting to wait for blood work and dealing with getting blood work, I just took the jab.
Exactly what I would have done.
In a few months, at my annual physical, I’m going to tell my doctor to pretend that I’m going to every disease-ridden hellhole on the planet, and hit me with everything they’ve got in the ‘fridge….
b&
They must be hoping for some mean pinball players. Too bad it doesn’t quite work like that….
b&
I thought everybody – apart from anti-vaxxers – knew that?
I had it as a baby so don’t remember it and since I’ve always associated with those who appreciate that their children don’t have to die of curable illnesses, I never met anyone else who had it.
I have a friend who is deaf in one ear after surgery for a brain tumor. At first I couldn’t remember that I should always be on her left side. Without firsthand experience, it just doesn’t occur to most people that one ear isn’t as good as two.
Sorry to hear of your impairments, Blue. People being rude and impatient must feel like the last straw sometimes; they wouldn’t respond that way to an amputee, say.
. . . and invented down here in Australia.
See our main charity for helping out with such implants for the history:
http://www.scic.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/SCIC-History-of-the-Programme.pdf
god made her deaf…
…and Science cured her…
(I’m sick of fixing his mistakes)
Jerry, when you have time, go a few miles west to Willowbrook and sit in a class at Child’s Voice, a remarkable school that takes children born deaf and equips them with cochlear implants before their first birthday. The process of learning to program the brain to turn the sensations into hearing, and then speaking is amazing.
I sat in a classroom where about 20 4-year-olds were singing a song. Yes, singing a song. On key. It was among the most moving thing I’ve ever seen in a school, ever.
The best part is these children graduate and are mainstreamed by kindergarten or first grade. They can attend school with no special helpers, no sign language, and succeed. Many become honor roll students because they’ve achieved difficult demanding goals by the age of six. Regular school is just one more challenge. Check out childsvoice.org
BTW, a few years ago I redesigned their logo. You’ll see the apostrophe is a cochlear implant. 😉
Damn that was great. Ahhh, a little misty-eyed right now. Feels good.
Mightily impressed, indeed. This is a major technological breakthrough, saint-producing-miracle-level indeed! (saint-Nobel I mean).
Those electronic engineering marvel combined with totally awesome surgical medical engineering (no doubt added by super dexterity of the surgeons involved), plus ability to overcome all murphy-law accidental consequences. Wow!
Mighty thor! This is much more miraculous than your bronze-age hammer!
(and in decades ahead, due to inherent characteristics of scientific discoveries, those engineering skills will be mightily common, remember the eye-implant of The Minority Reports ? .. )
It is very interesting how her brain can make sense of the sound right away. Perhaps this is linked to her ability to speak.
I was born this way. I grew up this way. This is just a difference. An impairment I would know of; I do not know otherwise so this does not ‘feel’ to me like an impairment would ‘feel’. Hearing as I do ‘feels’ to me as … me. I have no eighth cranial nerve emanating to the left side from the brain’s medulla: tinyurl.com/n7cwa62.
The ‘impairment’ angle to the way many ( and perhaps not totally ) deaf people experience actually derives most likely from the exterior: for me, it, the impairment angle, is the impugning of my integrity.
An example, “O, you heard me. I ‘know’ you heard me ! You are just selectively ignoring what I said, aren’t you, you ______ (fill in the blank with whatever innuendo – containing expletive with which one chooses to degrade. C**t is one of many which I regularly ‘heard’ thrown at me from my then – spouse, himself a physician … … ) ?!”
Over the years, 66 of them now, I cannot even fathom the number of times I personally, to my face (as well as behind my back), have been, sometimes repeatedly by the very same person, accused over and over and over and over again of being dishonest. My own mother, ashamed of her rural roots at where she had had no immunizations as had not there as well many, many other persons of both genders, actually called me a slut for not hearing her directives … … the first time. Even from other women ( including mothers ! ), most times the name – calling for partially deaf females always has to these derogatory appellations sexual connotes.
This behavior — from persons exterior to the deaf ones — is quite likely .why. ( to a great extent, at any rate ) there is a discernible / a palpable bonding within the deaf humans’ communities.
I will fail to be convinced that this behavior — even with lovely, lovely science — toward people who hear differently will cease in my lifetime. It has happened just way, way, way too often.
Blue
Sorry to read about your pain and hardship. Good reminder for more patience and to give people the benefit of the doubt when interacting.
Yeah, I always had to go on my grandmothers good ear side to talk to her 🙂
People are jerks. I’ve had some not believe I am in pain with migraines too. Just because I don’t writhe on the ground, doesn’t mean I’m not in crazy pain! Doctors can even be this way.
I was quite moved by this when I saw this on the BBC especially as I had sudden hearing loss at 31 losing a lot of the right ear and high frequency in the left. Auditory nerve damaged so hearing aids help but I can’t hear speech on the right. I suspect even though this is great for her the biggest problem is learning to hear especially in tuning out background noise. It will be very difficult for her to cope with crowded noisy places and she might be better off in that sort of situation with them off as she will be used to that. All the same the NHS is absolutely great for people in the UK and we can’t understand the US health system at all.
I should chip in here as I work in a library devoted to hearing & D/deafness.
A student friend who is a library user with us has a CI & she would dearly love a second, but her hearing loss was progressive & she does not have that ‘cultural’ Deafness that was recently covered by the book “The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry.”
Cochlear Implants are widely used now but for some (not all) culturally Deaf the whole issue is sesitive to say the least. I am careful not to share a personal view (though I may well have one!). This article gives a flavour of theose who think this video should not have been shared
http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/03/why-you-shouldnt-share-those-emotional-deaf-person-hears-for-the-first-time-videos/359850/
Make up your own minds!
Thanks for sharing this!