This was an interview done with Jeanie Krause at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sensory Lab.

Khang - What do you think will be the biggest advance in genetic engineering?

Jeanie - Genetic engineering is not my field but I think genetic engineering will be the greatest advance in technology. They have already started cloning and I think it is plausible that within the next 10 years people will be able to grow their own organs for transplant. You might also be able to treat a lot of diseases through gene therapy. People might even live forever though this at least if they have enough money to pay the doctor.

Khang - Money is always the source.

Khang - What is the biggest development in your field of technology?

Jeanie - Well in my field the biggest thing is the popularization of the cochlear implant. Cochlear implants are already in use right now. A cochlear implant is a device that is surgecially implanted in the head. For most types of hearing loss there is a problem in the inner ear, but the oditory nerve that goes to the brain is fine. So they take electrodes and they put them smack dab into the oditory nerve while placing the microphone behind the ear. So the microphone send the sound directly to your brain and bypasses your ear. They work okay now so they are used for people that are pretty much totally deaf. But if you or I lost a little of our hearing the implant would not be good enough for us to know the difference. Yet I feel that within 10 years it will be good enough to repair any level of hearing.

Jeanie - Actually 1 out of 4 college students that I have interviewed have moderate hearing loss from listening to loud music.

Khang - So it will make a totally deaf person hear again.

Jeanie - Yeah that's how it is used now. It makes deaf people hear but kind of in a distorted way. When a person is using the implant and they are looking at the person's lips they use those two things together to figure out what another person is saying. Though I think that within the next ten years that these implants will be able to turn a totally deaf person into a total hearing person.

Jeanie - I don't know if your interested but the deaf community have their own language- American sign language. They have a lot of history within their community which they pass down through their language. And they are afraid that if we implant totally deaf people their culture will be lost. So most people who have been deaf all their life don't like cochlear implants. Though scientifically the ability to make your self hear again will be there. I personaly feel that hearing people who start to lose their hearing in life will be buying it up like crazy.

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