> What if the hearing can one day "solve" deafness in say 98% of children at birth? The cultural Deaf community may well face extinction under those circumstances.
By this logic, would a cure for cancer be a bad thing too, since then cancer patients would be extinct?
Unlike deafness, cancer tends to be fatal. More appropriate comparisons (though not entirely comparable) would be gender dysphoria, autism, or, if the "gay gene" hypothesis is to be believed, homosexuality.
I don't think we should reject the creation of a medical cure at all. I'm completely of the view that if an procedure exists to treat/cure a problem (however that's defined to exist) the procedure should be available to the extent the creator is interested in providing it.
However, GP expanded upon a sociological dimension to disabilities and chronic illnesses that isn't usually discussed and considered. When asking "How do they cure it", an important question to consider is "Do they/ Would they ever want a cure and under what corcumstances?"
It's quite the coincidence that deafness was the example used, because the scenario GP describes actually happened once before:
By this logic, would a cure for cancer be a bad thing too, since then cancer patients would be extinct?