Graeme Clark and the Bionic Ear Story
As a child with a deaf father, Graeme Clark dreamed that one day he would find a way to help deaf people to hear. As an adult, he left a career as a specialist in ear surgery to return to relative poverty as a research student in order to follow his vision of creating a bionic ear. He was unaware of the great struggle that would lay ahead. Faced with a lack of funding for such a radical ideas as well as opposition from both the scientific community and the deaf community, Graeme's persistence and grit over 30 years is an inspiration to us all. Twenty-one years ago his research team implanted the first bionic ear into an adult. Since then, over 25000 people have been fitted with Graeme's bionic ear and it is now possible for children born profoundly deaf to receive the implant and to hear as a result. His is a moving story of the joy that the gift of hearing can bring, of the impact that Australians can make on the world stage, and the power of a vision.
