I read this some years ago about hair cells found in all birds. Apparently, they did an experiment by "burning and killing off the hair cells" in ears.
So they regenerated back like normal. This mean that birds could not ever go deaf.
That would be feasible exploring field for stem cells. Of course, we will probably be 100 years old when this technology would be available to start an instrumental genocide of all deaf community and deaf culture rots off within few years afterwards.
Comments?
You don't have to believe me or my expierence in medical research but...I worked in a lab that many of those papers are from. (Some people here argue medicine with me...and I really can't reply to them because they don't see a difference between googling and advanced degrees in biomedical research.)
The promise of research along those lines is the theory that you could use a viral vector to introduce the target gene into human cochlae.
The problem is that viral vectors are largely untested, and in this case, the gene is a modification of a ridicuosly important gene that prevents normal cells from turning into cancer.
The preliminary results of the experiments regarding bird cells in mammals has been minor increase in hearing threshold (measured by ABR which just gives a measure of what cells can possibly hear and not what the individual actually hears). If the mice lived long enough they would develop tumors. That is what happens when you knock out p53.
And to DeafDyke, these therapies are directed only to SNHL because other forms of deafness (aural atresia, middle ear malformations, chronic ear infections) can almost always be treated medically.
If one of the treatments the OP referenced was approved, it would likely be decades before it was approved for children since children cannot consent to be part of clinical trials.
So the fact that a treatment wouldn't benefit children isn't really valid unless you ant to change medical ethics.
Also, I know I'll et shit for this, but cochlear implants work really well for congenitally deaf children regardless of whether they are taught using sign or spoken language.
We need to move past the "evil CI is destroying Deaf culture" debate.
