[nabs-l] If the World Went Sighted..

[Arielle Silverman]

Hi all,

We recently had a discussion about how we would react if some of our
blind friends could become sighted, and we asked whether it would be
reasonable for a sighted person to want to go blind. This made me
think of an interesting, although a bit painful, question:
Would the world be better off, worse off, or about the same if
blindness were completely eradicated, through genetic engineering
and/or mandatory treatment of all causes of blindness?
The question may sound silly, but for many vision researchers,
eradication of blindness is a real goal. But does the presence of
blind people in our society have any benefit to the society or the
world as a whole?

Certainly there are costs of having a small group of people in society
who read and travel using different techniques than the rest. These
specialized techniques have to be taught, technology has to be adapted
to their use and negative public attitudes prevent this minority of
people who do things differently from having full access to societal
goods and opportunities. So would it be cheaper and less
resource-demanding if everybody could use the same visual techniques
to accomplish life tasks?
On the other hand, you could perhaps argue that having people who use
different senses to do things in society is advantageous. Technology
is forced to innovate to become usable by those who don't have vision
as well as those who do. And conceivably, if a darkness plague struck
the planet, it would be better for the species if some of its members
could fully function without light.

What do you think? Should we as a society make an effort to get rid of
blindness? Or does blindness serve any kind of social function?
There obviously isn't a right answer here, but it's something that,
for better or for worse, could become relevant to us someday.

Arielle