Interesting story from News of the Weird:

"According to a March Washington Post Magazine feature, a deaf Bethesda, Md., female couple recently gave birth to a child whom they had conceived by artificial insemination and specially designed to be born deaf. (They had used sperm from a man with a long family history of deafness.) The couple said they merely want their son to be like the rest of the family, including their older daughter. The boy is deaf in one ear, but the other ear may still develop hearing. [Washington Post Magazine, 3-31-02]"

Something you probably don't know about me, when we adopted one of my younger brothers we were specifically looking to have a Deaf child (my father works as an intepreter between english and american sign language, and also works with Deaf pastors and Deaf churches accross the country). It turns out he started hearing (probably his brain shut down the portion related to hearing due to some early childhood trauma)... Its definitely a great thing for Deaf people to have a whole Deaf family where they can all communicate in their first language.

I wonder how many degrees of seperation I have from this couple. As the ASL saying goes (sorry for the bad translitteration, but its the way it would be written on TTY or email i bet) "Deaf world small." (There's no to be verb in ASL, its indicated by a facial change.) I ought to ask my dad if he's heard about it, i bet i'm no more than three degrees of seperation and probably only two.