[stylist] question

[Angela fowler]

Restoring sight to a person who never had it doesn't work anyway. The part
of the brain which makes sense of visual information has no need to develop,
so it doesn't bother. If I, having been blind all my life, suddenly got my
vision, I wouldn't know what I was looking at, maybe I never would be able
to make sense of it. At best I'd have to go through a similar transition to
someone who was fully sighted but suddenly lost their vision. At worst I'd
not be able to handle the senseless visual information, and would opt to be
totally blind again.   

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of helene ryles
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 11:37 AM
To: NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] question

John,
I feel the same way as you regarding any sort of animal based research
promising people cures. I'm ok non animal based research for things like
cancer, but whatever the reason for reacherch, if rehabilitation came first
(as it should do) we would be 'curing' most differantly abled people's
problems.
By promising a cure we are actually holding people back, and we are hurting
millions of animals in the process.

A sighted woman once said to me "I wish you could see" so I explained
exactly why I chose to accept my blindness. I offended another'friend'
by not being interested in a coclear implant. Right now some people are
having a hard job undersanding why I arn't going for a 3rd guide dog.

I think we go too far to correct a blind child's sight. Even when it's a
losing battle and the sight is likely to go anyway eventually.
People need to know when to stop trying to stop sometning that isn't really
broke.

Helene

On 24/03/2009, John Lee Clark <johnlee at clarktouch.com> wrote:
> Lori:
>
> I love the words blind and deaf.  I abhor anything with impaired in it.
>
> Although the definition of blind may say one who cannot see, and 
> that's a negative description, we still have the opportunity to 
> neutralize the word itself and have it convey something else entirely, 
> into something that's cool.  Same with deaf.  We can take it and turn 
> it around, and associate it with culture, pride, ASL, all sorts of great
and positive things.
>
> But you can't neutralize and turn around a term like sight impaired.  
> Tthat term does two very bad, bad, bad things.  First, it implies that 
> sight is the ideal, that it's right, and what we SHOULD have, and that 
> if we don't have it, we SHOULD want it.  This is society talking, "Sight
is better."
>
> Second, the term implies that we're broken or we're short of the 
> ideal, or we've fallen from the grace of what society says is normal.  
> This is very bad, bad, bad.
>
> Does NFB merely "prefer" the word blind?  It shouldn't.  it should 
> embrace it absolutely.
>
> John
>
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