Saving Deaf Children? Screening for Hearing loss as a Public-interest Case

Abstract

New-born screening programs for congenital disorders and chronic disease are expanding worldwide and children "at risk" are identified by nationwide tracking systems at the earliest possible stage. These practices are never neutral and raise important social and ethical questions. An emergent concern is that a reflexive professionalism should interrogate the ever earlier interference in children's lives. The Flemish community of Belgium was among the first to generalize the screening for hearing loss in young children and is an interesting case to study the public justification of early interventions for families with deaf children. This article uses a critical lens to study the archive of the government child healthcare organization in Flanders in order to uncover underlying constructions of childhood, deafness, and preventive health. We focus on two interrelated themes. The first is the notion of exclusion of the human factor through the mediation of technology. The second is the idea of deafness as endangering a healthy development, an impairment that can nevertheless be treated if detected early enough. It is argued that, since deafness cannot be viewed as a life-threatening condition, the public interest which is implicitly defended is not the rescue of deaf children rather the exclusion of otherness.

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“…This is, of course, a contrast to western bioethics, that situates itself in a theologically neutral, secular, space so that dispositions can be independent of any particular theology. Bosteels et al (2017) from Gent, Belgium, interrogates the ever-expanding nature of public health interventions for children, with particular regard to screening for deafness. The bigger question here is: where are the limits of personal (and in this case parental) liberty as society is driven by utilitarian norms to identify defects and disabilities to correct?…”