"A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrived?

[Argus Skyhawk]

Gaith wrote:

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Anyone know the name of the first American sentenced to death row who was exonerated by DNA fingerprinting?

Kirk Noble Bloodsworth. His blood proved his (noble) worth. Not kidding.

Reality itself can seem highly contrived at times.

I've always felt similarly about the fact that a legendarily famous writer was named William Wordsworth. There is also the fact that the court case that legalized interracial marriage in all states was Loving vs Virginia. Cause, ya know, Virginia was against interracial loving.

Anyway, as for the main topic of this thread, that scene did not strike me as trying to make any statement about suicide or euthanasia. It was just providing a reasonable source of personal angst for McCoy.

[T'Girl]

HaventGotALife wrote:

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Weeks from a cure? He didn't hear about the research, and save his father?

Hear about the research? Wouldn't McCoy have been participating in the research, if not leading it himself?

I do wonder if the event (assisted suicide) happened at all. Or was it something Sybok placed in McCoy's mind. How much easier to remove someone's pain, when you yourself placed there in the first place.

[A beaker full of death]

The Keeper wrote:

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Kelly's passion sold the scene for me. I hadn't seen that look on his face since CotEoF, it gave me an homage tingle I had not felt for some time.

It was really great to see him actually act again.
This movie is woefully underrated because of few incredibly minor nits.

[Tiberius]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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"Word of a cure" still has to come sometime. Like one day there's no cure, then there is a possibility.

But it wouldn't be word of a cure. Let's say Bones had no knowledge at all, and then a few weeks later he heard. He certainly wouldn't have heard of a cure, for the simple reason that they couldn't have developed one so quickly. he would have heard, "We've discovered a way of disabling one of the genes in the virus that causes the disease" or something like that. It would have taken a few years at least to conduct the research and develop it into a treatment that could have been administered to people.

And if what came a little while after his dad's death was an actual cure, Bones would have known at the time, "They're working on a project that is very promising." And therefore the news of a cure wouldn't have come as a surprise at all.

[Gaith]

Tiberius wrote:

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It would have taken a few years at least to conduct the research and develop it into a treatment that could have been administered to people.

An expert on 23rd century medicine, you are?

[Peach Wookiee]

^The speed of a cure wouldn't be constrained by our 21st century standard of how things are done.

[Tiberius]

Gaith wrote:

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An expert on 23rd century medicine, you are?

No, but I find it very hard to believe that they had a disease that was incurable and then in the space of three months they had a medicine that they were distributing to patients across the Federation.

They still need to run tests, y'know. Then analyze the data they get from the trials.

[Elder Knight]

I suppose that when any cure becomes available, it's just weeks too late for some victim.

[Lance]

Bones was just talking literally. "A cure... they found the God-damn cure... they'd lost it years ago, it had fallen down the back of a sofa at Starfleet Medical."

[jayrath]

T'Girl wrote:

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Hear about the research? Wouldn't McCoy have been participating in the research, if not leading it himself?

For all we know, young McCoy was offically a "doctor" but still a resident. How many med students do you know who do hospital rounds and also conduct research on a life-threatening disease -- let alone lead such efforts? Good lord, they get little enough sleep as it is.

[Tiberius]

jayrath wrote:

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For all we know, young McCoy was offically a "doctor" but still a resident. How many med students do you know who do hospital rounds and also conduct research on a life-threatening disease -- let alone lead such efforts? Good lord, they get little enough sleep as it is.

It's still likely that he would have heard something in the grapevine, especially considering that he had a close family member suffering the disease.

And anyway, if he was that young, he wouldn't have been his father's doctor. So I think it likely that whatever doctor was treating McCoy Sr would have been aware of what was going on.

[J. Allen]

Some of you guys are trying to find a technological answer to an emotional problem. The scene isn't specifically about the cure they found later ('weeks' is never mentioned). That they found the cure not too much later (again, 'weeks' is never mentioned) is only meant to be the final nail in the coffin to McCoy's burning guilt about his father.

He could have said months, he could have said years, but he didn't, because the length of time is only secondary to the actual emotional cost that they did find a cure, and McCoy's survivor's guilt, doubly compounded by the fact that he was not only a doctor, but his son.

So you have a bright, young doctor, and his ailing parent. Doing everything he can to keep his father alive, desperately, and his father is so tired, so exhausted from all of the pain, from all of the life extending treatments that aren't working, he reaches out to his son, who is his doctor, the only one who can release him from the pain, the one he trusts to do this, and his son is conflicted, yet because he loves his father, because he doesn't want to see him in pain, and because there has been no word of a cure, he agrees.

Then, some time later, a cure is found.

That is the crux of the whole scene. How long it takes doesn't matter so much beyond the fact that it wasn't "too long after", which is nicely vague enough to make the impact of what happened, while not tying down too many details.

In short, you're asking the wrong question.

[solariabsg25]

It's not really contrived, as sudden medical breakthroughs can happen. In Trek it could be even more common, as some flora on that newly explored world of Omicron IV just happens to have medical properties unfound elsewhere.

Even if it was, contrivance is common in movies. What, in Star Wars, over the entire surface of Tatooine, the lifepod happened to land within spitting distance of Luke's farm?

[Trek Survivor]

WesleysDisciple wrote:

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curious... dont they have suspended animation, couldnt his dad have been put in stasis?

Stasis is almost never used in Star trek, simply to keep a patient alive, until a cure can be found.

Well, you're essentially saying "no one has to die, we just keep 'em on ice".

Didn't they do that in the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone"? I think most people would accept when their time has come, even if the "fad"/possibility of cryogenic freezing was available.

[golddragon71]

I was thinking about this...
What if the cure wasn't developed but actually, just "Found"?
Assuming Leonard's Father died of Xeno-Poly-Xythemia (the disease McCoy himself had i "For the World is hollow and I have Touched the Sky") it might have been a short while prior to his discovering he had the same thing on the Enterprise. In McCoy's mind, it wouldn't have been too long after (in hindsight) and up until that point, it would have had no known cure.
Therefore, at the time he did it! it would have been to preserve his father's dignity and spare him the pain but later McCoy would have realized that he could have been saved had they kept his father on life support.