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

[Jorge Paez]

Again,
wouldn't eliminating all of these be too artificial?
What would we have to do in that case?
Create people?


On Apr 27, 2011, at 6:00 AM, Jamie Principato wrote:

> 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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