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

[Jamie Principato]

I think the easiest way to consider this question without letting our own
emotional biases sway our response is to ask ourselves the same question as
it relates to another disability. I know what my snap-answer would be to
whether blindness should be eradicated from society on the grounds of making
the world a better place... but now slow down, back up and ask, is the
answer the same if we're talking about deafness? How about down's syndrome?
or cerebral palsy?

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 12:36 AM, Mike Freeman <k7uij at panix.com> wrote:

> I think the question is unanswerable.
>
> Mike Freeman
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf
> Of Arielle Silverman
> Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 9:08 PM
> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
> Subject: [nabs-l] If the World Went Sighted..
>
> 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
>
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