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# He Was Born Deaf. Not Anymore.
- URL: https://goodnewsdailytv.com/2026-08-11-he-was-born-deaf-not-anymore/
- Published: 2026-08-11T15:38:31.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-11T15:38:29.000Z
- Description: A boy born completely deaf just heard sound for the very first time — thanks to Otarmeni, the world's first gene therapy for inherited deafness.
- Author: Good News Daily
- Tags: Scientific Breakthroughs

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A little boy named Miles was born completely deaf — not hard of hearing, deaf. No lullabies. No music. Not one sound reached him, ever.

For two years, that silence was permanent — or so his family believed.

Miles was born with a rare genetic condition caused by a mutation in a single gene called OTOF. It affects roughly fifty babies born in the U.S. each year, and it doesn't mean hard of hearing — it means nothing at all. You could set off a fire alarm next to a child like Miles and get no reaction, because the tiny hair cells in his inner ear simply can't send sound signals to his brain. For decades, the only options were hearing aids that couldn't help and cochlear implants that could only approximate real hearing. Miles's mother, Kerri, had made peace with that path. Then a search online turned up the story of another child who'd regained hearing through something brand new: gene therapy.

Kerri pushed for genetic testing. When it confirmed the OTOF mutation, their geneticist told her it could change everything. Miles enrolled in a clinical trial, and at just over a year old, he had a short surgical procedure — similar to a cochlear implant surgery — to deliver a working copy of that missing gene directly into both ears. As CNN reported, doctors call the treatment Otarmeni. Then his family waited.

About a month later, an ambulance passed by. And Miles covered his ears. For the first time in his life, sound existed, and it startled him.

This spring, the FDA made it official: Otarmeni became the first gene therapy ever approved for inherited deafness. In the trial, sixteen of twenty children showed real hearing improvement within five months, and among children tracked for over a year, nearly half regained hearing that tested as essentially normal. Regeneron, the company behind it, made an unusual choice for a rare-disease treatment that could easily have cost millions: it's giving Otarmeni away for free to eligible patients in the U.S.

"It's miraculous," Kerri said. "You go from being told your child's profoundly deaf and may only ever hear with technology, to your child's hearing right alongside his friends."

Today, Miles loves reading dinosaur books, and he dances — really dances — whenever a song comes on, because to him now, music means you have to move. A boy who was born into total silence is growing up surrounded by sound.

This is bigger than one child. It's the first proof that a single injection can restore a sense doctors once believed was gone for good — and researchers are already chasing the same approach for more common forms of hearing loss. That means Miles might just be the first of many.

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**Sources:** [cnn.com](https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/23/health/fda-gene-therapy-inherited-deafness-regeneron?ref=goodnewsdailytv.com) · [hhs.gov](https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/wtas-fda-approves-first-ever-gene-therapy-treatment-genetic-hearing-loss-under-national-priority-voucher-program.html?ref=goodnewsdailytv.com)

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