21st Century humans illegal in the Trekverse!

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Ever since the TOS episode, we've heard that Genetic Engineering is illegal in the Federation, an issue that's touched on time and again in all of the series.

But the real world has been more accepting of GE.

With the news that gene therapy has had some success in treating hereditary blindness. News It raises an interesting question, especially given episodes like TNG's The Neutral Zone. Say someone who's undergone gene therapy treatment winds up in the 24th Century, will they be accepted, will they be ostracised as having undergone illegal modification, will they be treated as a criminal, or will they even have to have their treatment reversed?

Can you imagine someone who's had his blindness cured by gene therapy required to be blinded again so he can have a visor installed?

 

[Triskelion]

What about genetically-modifed athletes for pro sports or the Olympics? Will there be two Olympics, the "Naturals" and the "Moddies" versions?


"Mr Smith, we've cured your baby's blindness, got rid of that pesky poetry streak and went ahead and turned him into an MBA for you. You're welcome."

 

[sbk1234]

I would think that they defined genetic engineering somewhat differently, allowing for "repairs" that would put a person to basic health and well being, but wouldn't allow for "improving" the species, such as giving traits that didn't exist to begin with.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

I would think that they defined genetic engineering somewhat differently, allowing for "repairs" that would put a person to basic health and well being, but wouldn't allow for "improving" the species, such as giving traits that didn't exist to begin with.

Yet Geordi wore a visor and later had cybernetic implants. Picard has a Jarvik instead of a live heart grown from his stem cells harvested when he was born. It's apparent that even repairs aren't sanctioned.

When Worf crushed his spine in the accident in a cargo bay, Crusher offered him remote controlled implants, it was Toby Russell who offered to grow him a new spine, and she was considered unethical for it. Upgrades like curing Bashir's slowness are obviously illegal, but it becomes clear that Federation doctors have less qualms about turning their patients into Borg than they do about Genetic Engineering.

 

[sbk1234]

It's possible that the technology needed to cure Geordi's blindness didn't yet exist. The ethical dilema with Worf's spine, I always thought, was due to experimenting on a patient, rather than the treatment itself. As for the rest, obviously you've given this a great deal more thought than I have.

Seriously, though, there would probably be so much legalease written into the laws that many treatments wouldn't be allowed while others would. You know how liars - uh, excuse me, I meant lawyers - are.

 

[Pegaritaville]

I would think that they defined genetic engineering somewhat differently, allowing for "repairs" that would put a person to basic health and well being, but wouldn't allow for "improving" the species, such as giving traits that didn't exist to begin with.

On VOY, Chakotay had a gene that caused hallucinations supressed before he was born, and the EMH used gene modification to correct a spinal deviation on Torres' unborn child. So apparently "repairs" were allowed, but anything more (such as Bashir's enhancements or Torres' plan to alter the appearance of her child) was a no-no.

 

[T'Leisha]

It does seem to be something of a confusing issue in Trek, i'd even say more so than in real life.
It seems their position on genetic engineering depends on the situation. It ties into episodes dealing with cloning also. They are both moral issues that seem a little ambiguous in the trekiverse.
I suppose everything has grey areas..

 

[FordSVT]

I really do think you're mixing issues up.

Picard has a mechanical heart because when the episode was written that's what the writers thought would be "futuristic" sounding, and all the talk of stem cells and growing artificial organs had yet to enter the public consciousness. It wasn't because the writers made a conscious decision to give him an artificial heart instead of a grown one because the Feds would have an objection to that.

Worf's spinal transplant wasn't unethical, it was the way that the doctor was experimenting on people that got Beverly so pissed. As far as the technology itself went, she seemed really impressed.

I've seen no evidence that Trek disallows all genetic and biological modification, they just don't allow it to be used to enhance a person above baseline. They cure diseases and fix impairments as best they can. They just don't let people give themselves super-muscles.

Star Trek isn't hard, speculative sci-fi, and it will always be limited by its science-fantasy roots that were more concerned with looking futuristic (and with budgets) than really taking a hard look at "what might the future be like?" Couple that with the fact that people in the 1960s knew squat about a lot of sciences compared to today (especially medical and DNA-related fields). Heck, a lot of today's gadgets and the things we've been hearing lately about where medicine and other fields are going make TNG look outdated.

Outside of transporters, and warp drive, real-life Earth in 30-50 years will be far more advanced than anything we've seen in Star Trek.

 

[exalted one]

Outside of transporters, and warp drive, real-life Earth in 30-50 years will be far more advanced than anything we've seen in Star Trek.

I think Star Trek world is not really more technologically advanced than ours. Remember, they've endured a massive nuclear world war that threw a whole Earth back into the middle ages for nearly 100 years. Lots of knowledge were outright forgotten. They basically had to develop the whole "modern civilization" all again (this time with a bit of help from Vulcans and other aliens). So, aside of warp drive, 22th and 23th century is basically the same, technology-wise, as 20th century.

 

[FordSVT]

Your point is appreciated, but I wouldn't go that far. They've got anti-gravity, inertial dampeners, replicators, holodecks, they've cured cancer and many other diseases, fusion and M/AM reactors, AIs, etc. They did get set back in WW3, but we've seen some places that didn't seem to be greatly effected by it (like California), and ten years after it was over there was already a guy living in the woods building a warp shuttle. And then having the Vulcans come along obviously gave them a technological boost if they managed to eliminate most disease and hunger within 50 years.

They're really still a lot more advanced than we are right now, but aside from the stuff that for now seems to go against the laws of physics, I think we will find some alternative methods of doing a lot of the same things Trek pulls off in the coming decades. For instance, they seem to use "fields" and "beams" (ie magic) to do everything, and they use transporter/replicator technology that is highly unlikely to ever be possible within the foreseeable future. But in the real future we might be able to use nano-technology to duplicate many of the same end-results.

And our computer systems and (possibly) AIs are likely to be far more advanced than those seen in Trek within a few decades. Our computers now seem a lot more advanced than most of those presented in TOS. That wasn't intentional, the writers back then just didn't know how far computers would come in the next 40 years and wouldn't have had an accurate way of portraying them if they could have.

Trek has probably been wise to stay away from modern computer terminology when defining memory and computer processing power. I cringe when I see an old movie talking about 22nd century technology with 25 MB of memory and such.

 

[erastus25]

I've seen no evidence that Trek disallows all genetic and biological modification, they just don't allow it to be used to enhance a person above baseline. They cure diseases and fix impairments as best they can. They just don't let people give themselves super-muscles.

I agree completely. And for all we know it was much easier to give Picard and Geordi artificial organs. Perhaps it's a real pain in the ass to use genetics and stem cells to create the real thing, but really easy to slap an artificial heart in to a guys chest.

I think there's more to it though than just giving a guy "super muscles." Almost all of the allowed changes we've seen in 24th Century Trekverse have to do with physical qualities. For instance, B'Elanna's decision whether or not to make her baby look human had nothing to do with making it super smart. Picard's bionic heart and Geordi's super eyes didn't give either of them an exaggerated sense of ambition. Rather, the overtly outlawed genetic engineering was anything that would change a person into a "superthinker" for lack of a better term. The problem with Khan and his people was not that they had big muscles - it was that they had a maladjusted sense of ambition that made them ultra-aggressive compared to "regular" humans. The fact that the only attempt we see to alter a person's mental ability is Bashir, and his father was jailed for it, is support for this hypothesis.