Here’s another annoying article: “Bionic ears ‘threaten deaf culture’”, which I first read in The Metro on the train to Beckenham Junction this morning.

A few points I’d like to raise in response to this article:

‘normal’ language skills

/coughs. So sign language is not normal?

Eleven children who received implants before the age of one developed language normally, a team at the University of Melbourne found.

I totally abhor the thought of all these poor little mites who have received cochlear implants without any say in the matter.

‘The children don’t have normal hearing, but they have normal language,’ a team member said.

There they go again with that phrase: “normal language”. Grrr.

Harlan Lane, a psycholinguist at Northeastern University in Boston said: ‘The idea of operating on a healthy baby makes us all recoil.

‘Deaf people argue they use a different language and with it comes a different culture, but there is certainly nothing wrong with them that needs fixing with a surgeon’s scalpel.’

Hear, hear (!). Nicely put, Mr Lane.