Madness is not just having a different perspective.

I just listened to an amazing and peculiar conversation on Radio 4 this morning while driving to work.

A deaf man was arguing with the presenter, through the aid of an interpreter, that deafness was not a disability. The context was about comments made in parliament about the selection of embryos for IVF, and choosing to not select embryos that would result in deaf people. His perspective was that because deaf people were recognised as being equal to hearing people and the deaf association had determined that deafness was not a disability, the parliamentary speaker therefore wished all deaf people killed before birth. He argued that by the same token if deaf people were disabled, so should black and homosexual people be considered disabled, hospitalised and cured.

It was a brilliant piece of incredibly flawed logic. While it is possible to see the point he made, there was true un-sanity behind it. There is wonder to be seen in the way that humans can compensate and work around deficiencies. Yet to refuse to recognise a deficiency in defiance of all evidence has to be madness.

Doesn’t it?

*edit*
It would seem I wasn't the only one that picked up on the interview. Daniel Finkelstein wrote this article for the times newspaper, published today.