See - I don't get this. I've heard people mention it about the deaf community, but it just doesn't make sense to me - perhaps I'm missing something.

I have congenital hearing loss in both ears, and wear hearing aids. I don't know ASL (at least not well enough to use), as I am more or less able to function with hearing aids, with the usual caveats - background noise, group settings, still quite reliant on lip-reading and context to fill in gaps etc.

Within my financial means, I would glad pay to wave a magic wand and restore my ears to "normal". This gene therapy sounds interesting, but I'm not sure if that mutation is the cause of my hearing loss. And I'm always wary of side-effects, haha.

I do see my hearing loss as a disability - and no matter how much you try to dress it up, or with "don't diss my dis-ability" PR campaigns - it still does suck every day. I'm not saying you should discriminate against people for their disability - and I've steadfastly advocated for increased accessibility to level the playing field (e.g. in my workplace, at church, in the community). But I'm not exactly Matt Murdoch or Echo here.

And yes, I'm also "neuro-diverse" (starts with A) - and yes, I guess you could argue there's advantages there, under specific circumstances. But there's most definitely a penalty there.

I don't doubt your experience at all. The question I have for you is: Can you speak for all deaf people? I'm not saying everyone who is deaf is fine. But I do know that for many (even if a minority), it is fine, and it is different enough that they worry their kid will not have the experience they had, and may have a worse experience (in some ways) with hearing.

It's not a clear cut easy decision. I would say one should understand and respect the parents' decision. They know the factors way better than I do, and likely in many ways better than you do (especially as you don't know ASL).

I work with a deaf person (not born that way, but been that way most of her life). I'm sure she'd pay a hefty sum to get normal hearing - partially because her whole family (kids, etc) are not deaf. Even when she openly talks about the advantages of being deaf. If she did have a deaf child and chose treatment for her kid, I'd totally understand. But if she chose against it, I'd also totally understand.

What I don't get is people insisting they are totally wrong/evil for not pursuing the treatment for their kids. Almost always they don't understand the factors at play.

to be honest, you;'d have the same issues with that said magic wand and normalcy, because hearing aids do amplify sound and allow you to hear everythig.

You'd have the same issue, if not more, with background noise, group settings and context acquisition

Processing input is the hard part, if you're already having issues, that isn't going to go away