An illustration with audio waves juxtaposed over silhouettes of many different people.
Illustrations: Pablo Delcan

The End of Deafness

Tweaking a person’s DNA could provide hearing to those born without it, but not everyone thinks deafness needs to be ‘cured’

Emily Mullin
Published in
18 min readSep 29, 2020

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When Jessica Chaikof was born in February 1995, doctors at an Atlanta hospital placed a pair of headphones on her, piping sounds into her newborn ears while an electrode stuck to her tiny head measured her brain’s response…

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Emily Mullin
Future Human

Former staff writer at Medium, where I covered biotech, genetics, and Covid-19 for OneZero, Future Human, Elemental, and the Coronavirus Blog.