Here is my take, assuming:
- We have the ability to remove all birth anomalies
- It is safe and effective, i.e. not an experimental technique
- It is not controversial, i.e. curing sickle cell is just the done thing\
- Scanning tech is much better than today
Situation 1:
Woman learns she is pregnant, say week 6. Gets a routine scan on the embryo. She discovers it has a genetic disorder. That will cause it to not be able to breathe well, running and playing will not be an option for your baby, they will survive; sweet no brainer there; splice in the fix doc. Correction is spliced in the next week, monitoring for rest of normal pregnancy.Situation 2:
Woman learns she is pregnant, say week 6. Gets a routine scan on the embryo. Doctor says, looks like there is a genetic defect, the audio nerve is not going to develop normally, your baby will hear badly at birth, and then over the next two years will go permanently deaf. Implants could fix this issue after birth, and living as a deaf person is not difficult. However we can ensure that the nerve develops normally and your baby will have perfectly normal hearing.In situation 1, the obvious answer is to fix the issue, having life long breathing difficulties that could easily be avoided would be cruel.
In situation 2, in my opinion it would also be cruel to impose on a kid; hey we could have fixed your hearing in a safe and effective way, but we decided for you before you were born that you would be “special”.I get where people are coming from, but they are looking at it with 2024 eyes, not 2424 eyes. Why would you impose on a kid, who has no say in the matter, a disability? Because that is the choice you are making, you are imposing a disability on a child that does not need to be there.
We currently give women folate, to protect against neural tube defects; along with a bunch of other interventions. We are already “interfering” with the “natural” progress of pregnancy and birth, we are only going to get better at it.
And also the conflating of eugenics and fixing birth defects is completely off base. These are only related by the fact that breeding is involved; they have nothing in common beyond that. In the same way that my kitchen knives would make great stabbing weapons, but cooking and stabbing only really have the tools in common.
https://youtu.be/bqm_Iq8rFeg?t=16
“Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness.” Gene Roddenberry had the perfect response.
“No, by the 24th century, no one will care.”
Meanwhile Shatner was stealing half a dozen of Kirk’s toupées every season…
Let it be known, however, that Gene did say this after aggressively petitioning against Patrick Stewart as Captain. His baldness was specifically mentioned. According to Patrick anyway
well, he didn’t mention that in the bloody video. I blame Patrick Stewart for making me look like a fool.
Patrick has been telling this story for a while at the panels, Frakes and others will tell it too. Sometimes it comes with that caveat and sometimes not. I’ll see if I can find the clip where he talks about that.
The point about accomodation is the key here.
If being born without functioning legs isn’t actually an impediment or challenge because society makes allowances for people without legs, then it’s no longer a handicap!
If a blind person has options beyond merely having their sight “restored” to that of the baseline “normal”, then they have options that might open up paths that regularly sighted people don’t have, in which case their unique trait of being blind becomes an asset.
There’s the secret to the utopia Star Trek positsv not that we try to “cute” everyone born different, but that we instead create opportunities for them to thrive as they are. In the future of Star Trek, the word “disability” is probably alien to them. Rather, they would describe someone in our time with such challenges as “disenfranchised” because we don’t offer them opportunities.
This is a stupid take as well. There is also evidence that the federation does practice the correction of birth defects and disabilities when appropriate.
And why would they not? Allowing such impairments to exist when the medical technology to prevent it is available seems insanely unethical to me. Like breeding pugs because if people stopped doing that the breed would cease to exist, ignoring the fact that being a pug is a miserable existence for the animal.
I believe the most sensible policy for the federation (and us in real life) would be to correct any and all birth defects, disabilities and impairments wherever possible, while accommodating and fostering compassion and acceptance for the cases where it is not possible.
Disabled people are not lesser than anyone else and should have the same capacity to participate in society, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try everything to prevent people from being disabled.
Plus in Geordie’s case, his visor gives him better than normal sight. He can look at parts of the electromagnetic spectrum other than the visible wavelengths, so restoring his natural sight would have been giving him a handicap rather than removing one.
Also the whole “that disability is a part of who they are” sounds a lot like reducing people to their disabilities. Like it’s one thing if there’s nothing that can be done or if the best we can do isn’t enough to cause it to no longer be a disability, then they should be accepted disability and all. But it’s another thing if the disability could be corrected or made redundant (like Geordie’s visor giving him better than normal vision).
I don’t think the timing will work out for me, but if cybernetics get going during my lifetime, I’d consider getting augmentations. A coprocessor and memory expansions would be great, though I’d probably need tin foil hats or a magneto helmet to protect from solar flares and EMPs.
It’s crazy to me that some people think improving people’s capabilities, disabled or not, is unethical. No one bats an eye if someone gets a broken arm set properly to avoid it becoming a disability.
This is the breath of fresh air this dumb post made me need. Thank you.
Allowing such impairments to exist when the medical technology to prevent it is available seems insanely unethical to me.
There’s a not insignificant minority of the deaf population who believes that there should be no “cure” to deafness researched or put into practice because they believe it will destroy their community to have children receive this cure at birth. They literally want to deny children the ability to hear, even though we might be able to cure deafness with genetic engineering or other tech
I am aware of that sentiment and consequently find it selfish and ethically objectionable. While I understand that a special bond is formed this way, that happens anyway between halfway decent parents and their offspring because they love each other.
That is not a good enough reason to deny your child one of its senses.
There was an episode of scrubs about that
It’s a matter of quality of life. If someone without conventional hearing can have the same quality of life through other means, then there is no need to “fix” them, unless that’s what they want.
Obviously debilitating illnesses and pain are still dealt with, but stuff like missing limbs or other traits that we might call handicaps are not the same impediment in the future as they are to us, because there are so many possible paths for every individual to choose, and many of those might even be better suited to someone with a unique physiology.
I mean, in response to the last one, the Federation does allow (and sometimes advocates) for the correction of birth defects.
Julian: DNA resequencing for any reason other than repairing serious birth defects is illegal. Any genetically enhanced human being is barred from serving in Starfleet or practising medicine.
Deep Space Nine, “Doctor Bashir, I presume”
Doctor: Yes. It’s a girl. And aside from the deviated spine, she’s healthy.
Paris: Will she need surgery?
Doctor: Fortunately, we’ve advanced beyond that. Genetic modification is the treatment of choice.
Voyager, “Lineage”
So I imagine plenty of disabilities do end up being erased, it’s just that being disabled is also socially accepted to a much greater extent than today.
To add here, not everyone is born with disability but sometimes shit just happens
Yeah, I think for Geordy his eyes just got consistently worse until he was blind without a visor. On Ba’ku his eyes recovered briefly.
He was born blind and remained blind until he got his first VISOR at 5 years old. It’s in the TNG episode Hero Worship. His optical nerve was regenerating on Ba’ku but whatever his disability, it would eat away at it once he left the planet.
I could’ve sworn he was born without optic nerves or something like that.
He mentions that his eyes will deteriorate again once he leaves Ba’ku
From https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Geordi_La_Forge#Early_life :
Due to a birth defect, he was born blind
By the way, “again” in that context doesn’t necessarily imply his eyes deteriorated before. It references the previous change, but that includes the improvement, not just some hypothetical previous instance of deterioration.
It’s like saying “he went in the door, then he went back out again,” which doesn’t imply he had previously exited.
Yeah, but if his birth defect had no degenerative component his eyes wouldn’t get worse after being healed by Ba’kus energy field
“DNA resequencing”
If someone in Star Trek is born with a bum knee, they just laser surgery the knee. Deformed backbone, replicate a new backbone. A lot of defects and disabilities can be solved by 24th-century medicine without involving genetics.
McCoy gave that old lady a pill and she regrew her kidney using her own aged body inside of an hour. Apparently, fixes of that type are an over the counter prescription and don’t run afoul of the eugenics laws either.
Approved genetic modifications is more for things like conjoined births or fetal organ failure. Too many toes? Here’s some special shoes, carry on.
Since when is DNA holy scripture? I’d be optimizing that every day.
In Star Trek? Around the aftermath of the Eugenics wars
It’s interesting how an Earth conflict influences the whole Federation, tho
Why the fuck is Julian mentioned here along with the actually differently abled characters? He was genetically enhanced as a youth because his parents thought he was a little slow.
Well… you just sort of answered why.
I just feel like, at best, he’s more of an example of the other camp. He didn’t have anything wrong with him, his parents just wanted him to be more.
In Bashir’s own words:
“Small for my age, a bit awkward physically, not very bright. In the first grade, while the other children were learning how to read and write and use the computer, I was still trying to tell a dog from a cat, a tree from a house. I didn’t really understand what was happening. I knew that I wasn’t doing as well as my classmates. There were so many concepts that they took for granted that I couldn’t begin to master and I didn’t know why. All I knew was that I was a great disappointment to my parents.”
When he talks to his parents about it they talk about how they saw him “fallling farther behind each day” and that’s why they did the treatments. They loved him and did want him to be more, but the cause was quite clearly a learning or mental disability of some variety. The treatments started at 7 years old and first grade would have been at 5 or 6. If you’re not able to tell a tree from a house at 5 or 6 then there’s something far more wrong than simply being slow.
My only problem with this is that Geordi made it clear more than once that not only would he rather just be able to see, but that his VISOR caused him constant pain. I wouldn’t really call that accommodating for his blindness if that’s what was required to get into Starfleet later.
And, of course, that was what made it so impactful when he finally had eyes that worked.
And then there was Melora on DS9. Starfleet could have done so many things to fulfill her dream of traveling the stars without having her be stuck in the chair in near-1g environments or accept Bashir’s treatments. In fact, the only reason so few Elaysians ever left their homeworld was that everyone else was fine with 1g and no one gave a shit about their needs.
Geordi made it clear more than once that not only would he rather just be able to see, but that his VISOR caused him constant pain
it was also suggested that his visor was “superior to human eyes”. star trek is habitually inconsistent about its world and sometimes it is better not to think about it too much.
I don’t think that’s contradictory at all though.
Geordi wanted to be able to see [naturally], but his visor is superior to human eyes in that it can see things that humans can’t naturally see.
To put it a different way: a person with advanced bionic legs that never tire, could run far faster than any natural human, and bend in ways that human legs can’t, would have superior legs. But there wouldn’t be anything wrong with their stance if they said “yeah but I just want normal human legs”.
Geordie’s new eyes were still bionic though weren’t they? It’s been a while, but I’m sure I remember him using them to search for someone in the movie.
Yes, they’re still bionic
I don’t think that’s contradictory at all though.
Geordi wanted to be able to see [naturally], but his visor is superior to human eyes in that it can see things that humans can’t naturally see.
we are nitpicking here, but if i amputate your hand and stitch can opener at its end, you can now do something normal human hand cannot, but i don’t think anyone would call that superior, or prefer it to their own hand.
if geordi decided that after considering all factors, he would rather have normal eyes, then that is definition of “not superior” to me.
and just a reminder that this is the extraordinary experience we are talking about. i am definitely choosing my eyes 😆
I mean a can opener is very different, no? Or at least it is when I try to put myself in those shoes.
A can opener can open cans but nothing more. Sure you gain one piece of functionality, but you lose others.
Geordi’s visor was a bit different in that he could see the visible light spectrum, but also a bunch of other stuff.
“curing at birth” != “Eugenics”
Still, the spirit of accommodation is spot on.
They’re not totally wrong either, just missing a step and leaving a gap.
Genetic engineering is strictly outlawed in the UFP which came about from the Eugenics wars.
Removed by mod
I see names being mentioned and It’s problematic when someone assumes disabilities by armchair diagnosing characters with a disability and then defend it as if it were true.
“I assume normies would find this character annoying as they have some quirky, slight misunderstandings of personal boundaries so I’m going to attribute them with ‘being on the spectrum’”
That isn’t happening though.
Geordi is blind, Julian was genetically engineered to remove a learning disability and Tilly is stated as having special needs while being aggressively autistically coded.
The only one that doesn’t have something directly pointing towards it is Barclay but that man is the textbook definition of Aspergers Syndrome and people have been saying it for decades. It’s not like his issues are minor either. They’re a significant core component of the character.
Just FYI, “Asperger’s Syndrome” is no longer used as a medical term and some ND people do not care for it being used at all because it divides people on the autism spectrum unnecessarily, especially since there’s no real separation in terms of symptoms. Everything falls under “autism spectrum disorder” (ASD) now.
(I realize you didn’t mean to offend, just letting you know.)
Very few characters are ever seen wearing glasses.
Accessibility features on phones and computers have made so much possible over time, it’s fantastic.
It turns out thinking outside the box of common leads to great experiences.
They could solve racism by ensuring everyone has the same colour at birth! /s
The only thing I can think of whenever I hear that is, hilariously, an episode of Fairly Odd Parents.
Timmy wished for everyone to be a grey blob so racism couldn’t exist. People still kept saying they were grey-er or blobbier.
People just gonna hate.
Honestly that show was and is so far ahead it needs a cameo ship in trek. It would be like other federation ships, with nacelles that look like wings and a little crown floating nearby.
Or they could just bang each other. In fact I’m kind of alarmed at how decidedly unmixed people still are in whatever year it is supposed to be
