The Gallaudet Syndrome:
On Profiting from Deafness
Alison L. Aubrecht (‘01, G ‘03) and Ryan Commerson (‘01, G ‘08)
November 8, 2010
Money is Power. Power is Money. And Control. And Ego.
Suppose you have a “disability”? What if you’re Deaf? What are you worth, then?
As an independent, self-sustaining, Deaf, ASL-fluent individual who contributes to the world? You’re probably not worth much more than the very cushy profits that the Video Relay and Interpreting industry rake in. And of course, Gallaudet profits from your becoming a student. Where hearing professors and hearing students can observe you. Study you. Publish research and become experts who travel the world to explain to other hearing people about deafness.
But if you’re a deaf person riding the medical establishment train? Your deaf body is worth even more.
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) boasts 140,000 members and affiliates who are audiologists, speech-language pathologists and speech, language, and hearing scientists. The average salary for audiologists is $66,976, and for Speech-Language Pathologists, $66,744.
To be conservative, lets say there are 100,000 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and hearing scientists making an average of $60,000 a year, how much is that? $6,000,000,000. That’s six billion dollars a year.
And that doesn’t include the sheer amount of profits that insurance companies receive from hearing loss diagnoses, related assessments, and surgeries. Or the vast earnings for companies that provide the technology necessary to “repair” hearing (cochlear implant devices, for instance).
Between 1996 and 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health spent over $7 million on hearing loss research.
Universities that have audiology and/or speech-language programs also receive substantial grants. At Gallaudet University, for example, the Department of Hearing, Speech, and Language Sciences, which occupies two whole floors at the newly built Sorenson Language and Community Center, manages an annual grant of 1.9 million dollars, most of which is used to support graduate students.
And if that isn’t enough dollar signs to dazzle you, consider the 70+ Deaf Education programs across America, where more often than not, there are no deaf professors. Or the different programs, including schools, for deaf children, the majority of which are administered by hearing people.
But wait, there’s more. Anyone who works in the field of “deafness” knows that the majority of deaf individuals who have ridden the Gallaudet Syndrome Express are left dependent upon a system that has very little patience for that which they have perverted: the uneducated, the culturally and linguistically disfranchised. And guess what happens to those victims? They become isolated, angry, depressed, anxious, and yes—many turn to drugs, alcohol, and violence.
So, bring in the psychologists, psychiatrists, medical doctors, vocational rehabilitation specialists, and social workers who profit from the work they do with deaf people who have been traumatized by a system that teaches them that they are not whole and encourages them to seek ways to “better” themselves (which usually involves becoming as hearing as possible).
Once again: how much is the deaf being worth? And to whom?
Perhaps more pertinent: how much motivation is there to keep deaf beings in boxed cars?
https://www.audiology.org/Pages/default.aspx
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pdfs/2001-147.pdf
https://hsls.gallaudet.edu/Hearing_Speech_and_Language_Sciences/HSLS_FAQ.html
https://www.thedeal.com/newsweekly/insights/a-failure-of-communication.php