Cochlear Implant

The folks at Advanced Bionics aren't modest when it comes to their goals. They want to help the deaf hear, the blind see and the paralyzed regain the use of their arms and legs. Lofty, perhaps. But with technology advancing at breathtaking speed, employees at the Sylmar company believe their aspirations are within range. They're gearing up to be next century's leaders in neurostimulation. No longer are the Bionic Woman and the Six-Million-Dollar Man science fiction; today such medical device technology is reality, company officials say. "It's a very, very exciting time to be working in this area," said company President Jeffrey H. Greiner.

A novel treatment using human embryonic stem cells has successfully restored some hearing to previously deaf gerbils, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature. Hearing loss is generally caused by the interruption of two different types of cells: The loss of hair cells in the ear, which transform vibrations into electrical signals, and loss of the auditory nerve, which transmits the signals detected by the hair cells to the brainstem. While cochlear implants have proven effective in restoring hearing in cases of hair cell damage, no such treatment has existed for the roughly 10% cases in which the auditory nerve itself is damaged.

A friend expresses admiration for his life, but nothing's right as rain for Curtis, the small-town family man at the center of "Take Shelter. " The rain, in fact, looks tarnished, and the sky above his Ohio home is dark with foreboding. From the first moments of the eerie storm that opens the story, dread is the prevailing mood of this pre-apocalyptic drama — a film very much about this moment in time. That storm turns out to be a nightmare, the first of many for Curtis, who's played with quiet, anguished intensity by Michael Shannon in his most nuanced film work yet. Shannon has portrayed his share of unhinged characters, including the truth-blurting neighbor in "Revolutionary Road" and the messianic murderer in "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done.

Moved by a mother's story, state Sen. Jack Scott (D-Altadena) announced a bill Friday that would require group insurance plans to offer hearing aid coverage for children under 18. Scott's effort is the result of his acquaintance with Susan Grafman, a Burbank mother who hadn't recovered from the shock of learning in 1997 that her 2 1/2-year-old son, Jake, was severely hearing-impaired when she got another jolt: Her insurance didn't cover hearing aids for children.

Lashing out at what he described as "an invasion of privacy no citizen of this republic should endure," Rush Limbaugh's attorney Thursday denounced the Palm Beach State Attorney's office in Florida, whose investigators questioned the talk radio host's doctors and seized some of Limbaugh's medical records.

Most hearing people think a deaf person would automatically choose to hear, if given the chance, but that isn't necessarily the case--as Stephen Sachs' new drama, "Sweet Nothing in My Ear," at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood, strikingly illustrates. Moving beyond the familiar depictions of the enormous gulf separating the hearing and deaf, Sachs' issue-oriented work is concerned with the ramifications of technology that might actually bridge those worlds.

"Me have nothing. Me deafy. Speech inept. Intelligence--tiny blockhead. English--blow away. Left one you. Depend--no. Think myself enough. . . ." Sarah Norman's poignant opening lines from the play "Children of a Lesser God" gain clarity through translation. Translation: I have nothing; no hearing, no speech, no intelligence, no language. I have only you. I don't need you. I have me alone . . . . Sarah speaks with her hands in the language of another world: the deaf world.

Newborn hearing screening has been considered a valuable addition to newborn care over the last decade. The earlier children with hearing loss can be identified, experts say, the sooner they can begin therapies to learn sign language or be evaluated for cochlear implants. However, a new study shows that many children pass the screening test only to be diagnosed as hearing-impaired later on. The study, published Monday in the Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head & Neck Surgery , found that one-third of children who later received cochlear implants initially passed the newborn screening test.