COULD the end of sign language for deaf children be in sight? A spate of new studies has shown that profoundly deaf babies who receive cochlear implants in their first year of life develop language and speech skills remarkably close to those of hearing children. Many of the children even learn to sing passably well and function almost flawlessly in the hearing world.

These findings may sound like a triumph to audiologists and the hearing parents of deaf babies. But they have done little to convince those in the deaf community who maintain that it is unethical to give deaf …