Ethics and deafness: a matter of perspective?

In 2004, a conference was held in Sydney, Australia, entitled Perspectives on Ethics and Deafness. The questions underlying the conference were intriguing: What are the ‘‘ethical issues’’ that pertain to deafness? To what extent are such issues culturally relative? Are deaf and hearing individuals bound by the same ethical standards with regard to personal and professional relationships involving deaf people? How are ethical decisions concerning deaf children viewed differently depending on the hearing status of their parents? The conference program provided a clear response to the first issue. Predictably, perhaps, there were ethical issues identified in areas such as medical and technological interventions with deaf children, genetic screening and manipulation, respect and support for linguistic diversity, educational placements, interpreting, and so on. As these issues were presented, discussed, and debated over the three days of the conference, the question of ethical standards became of much greater interest. The issue of ‘‘perspective’’ became a clear issue in itself. The perspectives represented at the conference were many and varied. The meeting included deaf and hearing people from a of range of backgrounds including members of the Deaf community, educators, linguists, interpreters, social workers, psychologists, doctors of a variety of specialities including cochlear implant surgery, ethicists, geneticists, lawyers, parents of deaf children, and others broadly interested in issues relating to deafness and how they may be viewed through the prism of ethical standards. Notably, many of the professional groups represented have written Codes of Ethics to inform or guide professional behavior. Some of the presentations related to the formulation or application of those codes, while discussion sometimes questioned the extent to which such Codes are actually followed... or should be. The breadth of debate revealed great diversity of views and positions, even within the membership of professional groups with codified ethical standards. Essentially all of the views presented were argued from the standpoint of what is ‘‘right.’’ This is not surprising, because the very concept of acting ethically can be seen as a matter of doing the ‘‘right’’ thing. If we accept that being ethical means doing what is right, then we need some definition of ‘‘right.’’ Such a definition in any particular circumstance, however, is clearly a matter of perspective. The existence of multiple perspectives—professional, organizational, and cultural, to name a few—leads to the potential for great variability and likely disagreement about such a definition. In particular, such multiple perspectives may lead to conflict between personal ethics and those that may be determined as standards by a professional or other organization (particularly a cultural group). They become cloudy when individuals from outside of Correspondence to: Marc Marschark, Ph.D., Editor, Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 96 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623 (e-mail: [email protected]).