A Fairy Tale

Good morning. Here's a little fairy tale for you. Once upon a time in a land far far away you had a kingdom where all people spoke a common language until one small group came up with the idea of their own language that was expressed through their hands. For many years, the King and Queen turned their noses up at this group until eventually they met some of these people and realised they weren't just waving their hands around clumsily, but that they had their own, complete language. The King and the Queen slowly came to see the beauty of the language and respected it by finding people who spoke who could learn the magical language of the hands and could translate between the two so that the King and Queen and their court could come to understand the needs and desires of the hand-language people and could see what wonderful things they could bring to the kingdom as they all started to come together.

However! The King and Queen had a great magician in their court whose powerful magic looked at how life itself began. He found a magical way that people who could not get the stork to visit them and bring them a baby could, through his magic, give an offering to the stork that it would visit them and bring them a child. The people of the kingdom were delighted with this magic and rejoiced.

The people who spoke the magical language of the hands saw this and asked if they could have the same, that the stork would visit them too. The wizard said to the king and queen: "Your majesties! I don't think we should help those... those... hand people to have the stork visit them. Think about it, majesties. It costs a lot of your gold to pay for people to learn their clumsy language and do we really want more of these people anyway? Surely it's better to let them become a thing of myth and legend, that we can tell tales of the time when people spoke a magical language with their hands?"

The King and Queen thought about this for a while and said: "Their language is so beautiful but our coffers are nearly empty and the offerings that we must leave out for the stork are very expensive. We may have to say that some people aren't allowed our help. We've already decided that the trolls, ugly, gnarled, angry and painful as they are should not have our help in bringing the stork to their doors. Perhaps you're right, magician. What we could do is find out if the song in someone's heart will bring a child who will speak only with their hands and if so, we'll turn the stork away. If, though, their song will call for a baby like us, who speaks and won't speak with its hands, then we'll let the stork go to their doors. That way, those people won't carry on too much longer."

They added: "We don't want them to multiply and take over - look at the beauty and power of their language; it's magic is frightening. We understand you."

The magician breathed a sigh of relief and petitioned the King and Queen to speak with the gods who they worshipped and pray to make sure that the stork won't come to the hand-language people or the trolls or the vampires so those groups will fade away.

That's the tale so far - the King and Queen have agreed to ask the gods, but the hand-language people, the trolls and the vampires also worship the gods and they pay their taxes, so why shouldn't they be allowed to have the stork come and visit them? The tragedy would be if those people did not worship enough that the gods could listen to their pleas so the stork could never be helped to find their doors and the cruel magician would win. What can be done?

Fiction or fact? Click the links below.


Grumpy Old Deafies: Deaf Embryo Selection to be Made Illegal
BDA response to Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill