A number of professional, advocacy and lay people with interests in hearing and hearing loss are the featured "players" in Deafening Sound.

The alphabetical listings below provide short bio's for most of the main players, including H.E.A.R. executive director Kathy Peck, pictured to the right.

The players are divided into two categories: those who are experts in the field of hearing and hearing loss, and those who are involved with advocacy groups and/or have suffered some form of hearing loss themselves.

Most of the people below are featured in one or more of the video clips available on the Videos (all of 'em) page in the Extra Stuff section of this web site.


Hearing loss experts:

Patrick Brookhouser, M.D.: Dr. Brookhouser is director of the Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska; he specializes in research and treatment of hearing loss in children. Boys Town provides specialized medical care to children with hearing loss, speech and language problems, learning disabilities and related disorders.

Donald Henderson, Ph.D.: Dr. Henderson researches the causes and treatment of noise-induced hearing loss. Dr. Henderson is a Co-Director for the Center for Hearing and Deafness and a Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences at the University of Buffalo.

Mead Killion, Ph.D.: A doctor of audiology and an audio engineer with more than a dozen patents to his name, Dr. Killion is president of Etymotic Research in Elk Grove, Ill. Etymotic is maker of high-fidelity earphones and parts for earplugs and hearing aids.

Nancy B. Nadler, M.E.D., M.A.: Nadler is Director of the Noise Center at the League for Hard of Hearing. The Noise Center supports hearing conservation and noise awareness through education and outreach. The League's anti-noise educational program, Stop That Noise!, is used in more than 300 school districts throughout the country.

Kathy Peck, Executive Director, H.E.A.R.: Peck is a former rocker turned activist. She is the co-founder of H.E.A.R (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers), a not-for-profit San Francisco organization that aggressively attempts to increase musicians' awareness of the potential their working environment creates for hearing damage. Her band, The Contractions, opened for Duran Duran and occasionally played with The Dead Kennedys.

Richard J. Salvi, Ph.D.: Dr. Salvi is professor of communicative disorders and sciences and otolaryngology at the University at Buffalo's Center for Hearing and Deafness, one of the world's leading hearing research laboratories.

Robert W. Sweetow, Ph.D.: Dr. Sweetow is Director of the Audiology Clinic at the University of California at San Francisco. His area of specialty is Pediatric Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery. UCSF and Dr. Sweetow are national leaders in research and care for children and adults with hearing loss.


Advocacy and lay people:

Steve Abbott: The store manager for StereoWest in Lincoln, Nebraska, Abbott says it's not uncommon for boom car enthusiasts to spend as much as $2,000 on a set of speakers. If his customers want loud, he says, "I give'em loud!"

Jello Biafra: A punk rocker, Jello Biafra is the former lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, a legendary underground group. He continues to perform and frequent clubs in the San Francisco Bay area and is active in H.E.A.R.

Alma Gates: "Grandma" Gates broke on the dB drag racing scene in 1996 when she won the world championship at the IASCA world finals.

Flash Gordon, M.D.: Affectionately known as the Bay Area's "Rock Doc," Gordon co-founded H.E.A.R. with Kathy Peck. In addition to running a private practice, he is an online physician for WebMD.

Willis Ross: A symphony musician who played the piccolo, Ross suffers from tinnitus as a result of the high sound level in her orchestra.

Shane Rutherford: A drummer for the group Happy Dog, Shane is pursuing a career in multimedia work.

Dr. Sludge: A former punk rocker, Sludge suffers from a condition called hyperacusis, an oversensitivity to sounds. With hyperacusis, even the simple sounds made during dish washing can be painful, so Sludge wears firing range headphones while doing dishes.

Keith Wilson: Suffering hearing loss as a result of his repeated exposure to gunfire on a military firing range more than 20 years ago, Wilson is shown in the program as he is being fitted for some new $2,500 digital hearing aids.

  Video 22: Kathy Peck talks about her own hearing loss