Lecture Vol. 4 - 0 (Pst SG yrs.) cover
Address
By
C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD
To the Boston Guild for the Hard of Hearing
Boston, Massachusetts
November 30, 1989
During my tenure as Surgeon General I took an interest in the problems of hearing and tried to address it at three levels: screening of newborns, the inadvertent loss of adolescent hearing--listening to loud music, and the problems of deafness with aging. I was most successful with the first of these in that now, 15 years later, 37 states have mandatory regulations that keep newborns with hearing loss from falling through the cracks and being incorrectly diagnosed as retarded. The elderly know a lot more about hearing aids and how to get the most out of them, largely because of my own hearing loss, and the publication of a video on "How To Get The Most Out Of Your Hearing Aide", several years after the time of this lecture. I don't think I made a dent in the adolescent problem. For the benefit of the user, this is a lecture on hearing, which puts the hearing problem in perspective in reference to health in general in this country.