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Restoring hearing to people who are too deaf to benefit from hearing aids required an extraordinary, decades-long research endeavor. The 2013 Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award recognizes the contributions of three pioneers of cochlear implantation. The Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, announced September 9, recognizes the contributions of three pioneers of cochlear implantation: Graeme Clark, Ingeborg Hochmair, and Blake Wilson. Their collective efforts have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise be deaf. Deafness impairs quality of life by relentlessly dismantling the machinery of human communication. Ludwig van Beethoven, plagued by deafness, wrote in 1802, “For me there can be no relaxation in human society; no refined conversations, no mutual confidences. I must live quite alone and may creep into society only as often as sheer necessity demands. . . . Such . . .

Living in a world of silence can be isolating and lonely for those who have lost their hearing or were born deaf. When results from early seminal studies provided hope that a device could restore hearing to the deaf through electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve, many experts adamantly disagreed that hearing could be restored in a meaningful way. Fortunately, many dedicated individuals ignored these detractors and committed themselves to the development of such a device. The 2013 Lasker∼DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award honors Graeme Clark, Ingeborg Hochmair, and Blake Wilson, three visionaries who have contributed greatly to development of the modern cochlear implant. This device has brought a world of sound and improved the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people since its inception. The willing participation of these early implant recipients was key to the further development of the speech-processing units. Implant recipients have been instrumental in and dedicated to the testing and experimentation that is required to fine-tune the speech code.

Scientist Graeme Clark has won the 2011 Florey medal for his bionic ear invention, which has given the gift of hearing to thousands of people.

\"It was quite unexpected and is taking a little while to sink in,\" says Prof [Graeme Clark], who shares the US award with Ingeborg Hochmair of Austria and American Blake Wilson, both of whom also made significant contributions towards the development of the modern implant. \"I thought I was semi retired. But I can't stay away,\" says Prof Clark who has returned to the University of Melbourne. \"There is hope that we can make it even better. The progress has been remarkable. New technology is opening up opportunities,\" says Prof Clark.

The 76-year-old, who admits to a \"genetic inability to retire\", revealed his plans as he prepared to accept Australia's most prestigious medical research prize, the CSL Florey medal. \"I said when I started I really wouldn't want to finish until we achieved high fidelity sound,\" Prof [Graeme Clark] said. \"One of the last things I asked my first patient was, `what do you think of the implant?', and he said: `for speech it's wonderful but for music it's way off.'.\"

\"It's got more and more pressing as we've been able to diagnose children earlier, and also do things for them to restore them to a position where they have normal spoken language.\" \"If they don't have this - shall we say education of their brain cells - early, they don't connect up the right way and they don't therefore listen and hear speech as well as they should. \"It's not enough to be diagnosed early, it's not enough to have a bionic ear or Cochlear implant, it's not quite perfect hearing and they need the right help.

\"We've reached a halfway mark, you might say. And I now want to use new technologies, new physiology understandings, to try and make the next hi-fidelity bionic ear,\" he said.

\"The best way to describe it is if someone is hearing speech now with a good cochlear implant ... he would hear speech as though someone had a very hoarse, raspy voice,\" Prof [Graeme Clark] told AAP. \"The other problem is if you're in a noisy surrounding ... one of these restaurants with bad acoustics, you will not be able to latch on to the finer aspects of speech.\" \"What you might see is them singing Handel's Messiah opera ... or better still, a leading violinist. Now that would be something,\" he said.