• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

General Trek Questions and Observations

Oddly, this reminds me a bit of the controversy over Kurn's treatment on "Sons of Mogh" where some of the Tor commentators argued that Kurn needed therapy versus indulging his suicidal desires. I pointed out that I felt that Kurn wasn't mentally ill like many people with suicidal tendencies or depression. He was someone who was acting on a cultural taboo and the fact that he didn't want to live because ritual suicide was part of his people's reaction to dishonor. Which is different and not necessarily treatable (a patient has to want to get better and medication won't help Kurn).

Starfleet might view ANY desire to die as a mental illness, though.

Yes, I doubt you could have talked a Samurai from medieval time out of cutting his abdomen with a ritual knife (when the situation demanded it). If the prospect of a horrible death didn't deter him, nothing else would.
 
A patient in Worf's situation is desperate and not informed enough to know if their Doctor is bullshitting them. Consent can be coaxed. Russell absolutely played on Worf's desperation to test her theory. That is NOT something a Doctor should be doing. We're seeing enough of that crap with folk guzzling horse de-worming paste RIGHT NOW.
Are you sure you wanna compare a working, promising method that has the potential to cure the disease completely to a method that does none of these things?
The answer is in the quotes I've given. A physician must not harm his or her patient. Worf was alive and in no danger of dying from his paralysis. Had the surgery failed, he would have died as a direct result of it. Ergo, the surgery was not good medicine, and Picard admitted this.

For a doctor bound by good medical ethics (which Beverly was and the other doc was not), knowingly harming a patient is unthinkable. Just as much as slapping your mother or abandoning your child would be for you. The fact that Beverly was willing to risk doing so shows that despite her failings, she did respect Worf's cultural issues.
Any plastic surgery, laser eye correction, etc. would then all be unethical.
Unfortunately, medical ethics is not determined by your opinion, but by the strictures laid down by Hippocrates, 2400 years ago.
And Starfleet uses that and only that without changes or additions?
Legitimate treatments, yes. Unapproved, untested, highly experimental, and extremely hazardous alternative treatments that are a step or two above quack medicine, not necessarily.
What makes you think the treatment was close to quackery?
Take a hard look at the alternatives Beverly was facing.

1. Provide a safe, proven treatment to her patient that would restore 60-70% of his mobility, with no chance whatsoever of his dying.

2. Go with an unproven, untested treatment that worked less than 40% of the time in an idealized environment, proposed by a doctor who had just KILLED A PATIENT you could have saved, in the name of research.

No, Beverly's decision was the right one, from a physician's perspective. She only went the other way when she realized that it was inevitable that Worf would kill himself otherwise. As seen here:

PICARD: "Beverly, he can't make the journey you're asking of him. You want him to go from contemplating suicide to accepting his condition and living with the disability, but it's too far. The road between covers a lifetime of values, beliefs. He can't do it, Beverly. But perhaps he can come part of the way. Maybe he can be persuaded to forgo the ritual in order to take the chance at regaining the kind of life he needs. A Klingon may not be good at accepting defeat, but he knows all about taking risks."
CRUSHER: "The first tenet of good medicine is never make the patient any worse. Right now, Worf is alive and functioning. If he goes into that operation, he could come out a corpse."
PICARD: "This may not be good medicine, but for Worf, it may be his only choice."

From "Ethics"
1. was rejected by the patient
2. was explicitly chosen by the patient
 
Btw, when Picard has turned into a child and then back to an old man again. Shouldn't his artificial heart have been replaced by a real one (you know given the fact that he was changed at the cellular level)... I love how they can do magic things in one episode and are unable to replace a spine (by maybe an artificial one) in another (which admittedly is much less impressive).
 
Any plastic surgery, laser eye correction, etc. would then all be unethical.

Laser eye correction doesn't kill the patient 62% of the time.

And Starfleet uses that and only that without changes or additions?

Translation: I don't agree with the principles Hippocrates laid down. Therefore, ethical doctors should reject them.

What makes you think the treatment was close to quackery?

See "killed the patient 62% of the time".

was explicitly chosen by the patient

You're perfectly Ok with the notion that Worf didn't want to adjust to life with reduced mobility. But you can't handle the fact that Beverly had issues with potentially killing a patient whose life was not already in danger. That such a thing might be as appalling to her as life as a paraplegic would be for Worf.

Just as a Klingon shuns weakness, a doctor shuns doing harm. Worf wasn't the only person being asked to do something nearly unthinkable for them.

Btw, when Picard has turned into a child and then back to an old man again. Shouldn't his artificial heart have been replaced by a real one (you know given the fact that he was changed at the cellular level)

Why would 40% of his body mass disappear because some genes got adjusted? And how did they get it back later on? And why don't they just recreate the accident every time a person gets old: reduce them to age 11? It's immortality in a bottle, or a beam in this case.
 
source? basis? reasoning? :guffaw:

Reread their last few posts on the subject. They're acting like Beverly was devoid of ethics because she was adhering to one of the fundamental aspects of medical ethics: "don't make the patient any worse".
 
Reread their last few posts on the subject. They're acting like Beverly was devoid of ethics because she was adhering to one of the fundamental aspects of medical ethics: "don't make the patient any worse".
Yeah, i never understood the rationale that since the treatment was successful that makes it ethical. Except, Worf only survives because of Klingon physiology not the treatment alone. He actually dies and his physiology saves him. It should be heavily reviewed from an ethical standpoint.
 
Yeah, i never understood the rationale that since the treatment was successful that makes it ethical. Except, Worf only survives because of Klingon physiology not the treatment alone. He actually dies and his physiology saves him. It should be heavily reviewed from an ethical standpoint.

Just because a treatment is dangerous doesn't mean it's unethical. Some treatments of cancer used to kill people faster than the disease itself. It gave people a chance to survive cancer but at the same time, it was such a strain on the body that people often succumbed because of the treatment itself.
 
Just because a treatment is dangerous doesn't mean it's unethical. Some treatments of cancer used to kill people faster than the disease itself. It gave people a chance to survive cancer but at the same time, it was such a strain on the body that people often succumbed because of the treatment itself.

True. Modern cancer treatments are still pretty brutal. However, regarding making the patient worse, certain death (from untreated cancer) is worse than possible death (from aggressive treatment).
 
I don't think it's fair to call the method (close to) quackery. It seemed to originate from research that in itself up until that point was conducted in a valid manner- it was just still way too early in its development to test it on a real patient, and the 'unethical' part was the doctor willing to try that, despite the fact that a slower, but safer way existed to perfect the method, possibly 'preying' on the despair of the patient to get permission.
 
Keeping the shields down may be at the same level.... almost. The Nazi remark was just downright stupid, Spock must have had something on his mind that kept him from being rational...

Listen, the Earth was a radioactive wasteland after the Nineties. History is going to have some gaps.
 
I never understand the people who freak out and throw a fit when Star Trek or X-Men tackles social issues or strive for the betterment of humanity. What do they think they've been watching this whole time? Next they're gonna complain that Pride Day is no longer just for straight white Christians.
 
I never understand the people who freak out and throw a fit when Star Trek or X-Men tackles social issues or strive for the betterment of humanity. What do they think they've been watching this whole time? Next they're gonna complain that Pride Day is no longer just for straight white Christians.
People complain about random things. Not worth commenting on online since there is no relationship to build upon.
 
Some Comedian whose name escapes me at this hour said that he got hateful tweets for posting a picture of a cabbage.

Twit-verse is not worth the time.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top