Janeway's Decision to Kill Tuvix

[Brit]

There is something known as ahybrid, where parts of two gentically distict individuals are combine to create a new. So if we create a new plant i.e a wheat planet that can survive in more arid regions. Is that not still a living organism?

So in "Tuvix" we have organism 1 Tuvok and organism 2 Neelix which are combined tocreate a new organsim. True in nature the orginals are generally not lost.

Now the closest case we've seen on ST that might come close is "Measure of a Man"

And on determing if Data was a life form or not we had three criteria

1.>Intellignece
2.>Self-Awareness
3.>Consciouness (aka a Soul)

Well Tuvix was definatly Intelligent, he seemed self-aware as for the 3rd point just as in the case with Data it can't be proven. But Data was at least granted the right to explore that possibility.

This isn't the same, Data is an individual on his own. Created yes, but two other people didn't have to give up their lives for him to exist.

Tuvix didn't cause the accident. He was the result of it. He meets the criteria to be an individual... the same ones Data did you admit... but just because he refused to sacrifice himself for the benefit of two others, you'd deny him his life? I just don't think in a moral society, any authority should be able to take an innocent life against their will regardless of the circumstances.

It has nothing to do with the cause of the accident and everything to do with who "owns" his own body. I agree that Tuvix didn't cause the accident, but just because the accident happened is not reason enough to commandeer another's life. Tuvok and Neelix had "title" to their own bodies, it doesn't matter if Tuvix was sentient, it doesn't matter that he was an individual or that he had feelings. He had no right to take what wasn't his to begin with. I can and do deny Tuvix "his" so called life because your argument can apply just as easily to Tuvok and Neelix and they have an established prior claim. They too are sentient, individuals and they too have a consciousness.

 

[MacLeod]

^Didn't Janeway commandeer Tuvix's life to get Tuvok and Neelix back? If it was wrong for Tuvix to commandeer their lifes it was also wrong for Janeway to commandeer Tuvix's life? And yes it does matter if he was sentient, under Federation law he should have been afforded the same rights as any other living being. He after all had no say in his creation, you can't blame him simply because he existed.

 

[R. Star]

^ Yeah.. that's why people are trying to dehumanize Tuvix in their arguments. Calling him an accident, Brit's statement of "his" so called life, apparently him not having a "title" to live. It's quite standard from a psychological point of view for people to do this to justify the death of someone in their own mind.

 

[Guy Gardener]

By this reasoning, at any point in the series that she felt like it, Kes could have demanded her lung back.

HA!

Even if Tuvix had been allowed to stay unified, Kes could have still demanded her lung back because she had given it to sweet lovable Neelix and not that creepy asshat Tuvix.

It's just a question of how badly Tuvix's lungs would have been mutilated as they were minced through a seive to extract the Ocampan DNA.

Only assholes get caught regifting.

WAIT!

WAIT!

Neelix had an Ocmapan lung grafted onto his body so he would have been still 100 percent Talaxian (Scientific Method, I know.) everywhere else within the parts he was born with... But Tuvix's birth would have consumed that lung on a genetic level to the point afterwards that a fraction of every cell in his body was a little bit Ocampan.

Maybe the reason Kes was revolted by Tuvix was not that he was a dick but becuase he was herself. Tuvix at his core was a shitpoor clone of Kes herself and even as dodgy as it got in Fury where they tried to runaway together, Kes did not want to make love to herself

Princess Priss.

 

[Brit]

^Didn't Janeway commandeer Tuvix's life to get Tuvok and Neelix back? If it was wrong for Tuvix to commandeer their lifes it was also wrong for Janeway to commandeer Tuvix's life? And yes it does matter if he was sentient, under Federation law he should have been afforded the same rights as any other living being. He after all had no say in his creation, you can't blame him simply because he existed.

No, look at it this way, when you return stolen property from a thief to it's original owner, you are not stealing anything. Tuvix's rights ended when the ability to restore Tuvok and Neelix was perfected. I am not blaming him for anything, I am saying that Tuvok and Neelix's claim to life took precedence over Tuvix's. Your body belongs to you and no one has the right to take it. These were not Tuvix's bodies, they had prior owners named Tuvok and Neelix. In this matter Tuvix has no rights. Again it doesn't matter if he had no say in his creation, that is completely beside the point. His humanity isn't in question, we are talking about bodies that didn't belong to him. Tuvix has no rights that supersede the rights of Tuvok and Neelix. Tuvok and Neelix didn't ask for the accident either, they are just as "human" just as sentient, and they have just as much "soul" as everyone else.

In fact IMHO the person most morally wrong was the Doctor, but I will concede that he was very young and probably not fully sentient at that time.

^ Yeah.. that's why people are trying to dehumanize Tuvix in their arguments. Calling him an accident, Brit's statement of "his" so called life, apparently him not having a "title" to live. It's quite standard from a psychological point of view for people to do this to justify the death of someone in their own mind.

No that is a logical reasoning, born from a whole lot of life experience. It's not that people do not care about poor Tuvix, it just that they care more about Tuvok and Neelix. But if you care so much maybe you can volunteer to be an amalgamated person. One thing I know for sure, no one gets my body until I am completely done with it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

If Tuvix had no individual rights, say like when Kally murdered Sharon in BSG, or the interrogation teams on Pegasus were expected to rape the Cylons to keep them down and under heel... I wonder if they would have raped the male Cylons too? because if it's part of the guidebook, since the female Captain was making sure this was happening to a "woman" she once loved, it was totally personal for Admiral Kane, but still it was clinical rape and not recreational rape in theory... It wasn't a very good theory which is Why Heilo and the Tyrol (accidentally) killed the rapist interrogator which started a civil war between Battlestars.

Could anyone have killed Tuvix at any point?

No consequences?

Kes could have shot him.

No trial, no jail.

Back to tilling the airponics bay as if nothing happened, the following day, because nothing happened because Tuvix was nothing.

Shooting Tuvix, is no different from turning off a hologram?

No rights to live means no protection from murderers and everyone is a murderer.

When slavery was en vogue, killing a slave would be a question of vandalizing some-ones property more so than murder, which means that rather than going to jail, you'd have to pay back the cost of the slave just like in a small claims court today, if you take a crow bar to someone's car windshield.

Oh?

If Tuvix had tried to commit suicide would have have had to have gone to trial for the attempted murder of Tuvok and Neelix?

 

[Melakon]

When Tuvix realized the cards were going against him, he should have stolen a shuttlecraft and gotten out of there. He didn't help his cause at all, because his position was entirely "Me, me, me, and the hell with whatever the rest of you think!"

 

[Guy Gardener]

150 crew, and no one stood up for Tuvix except the Hologram?

I think it's more likely that everyone was too much of a pussy to stand up to Janeway, than that anyone concluded that it was immoral to stand up for Tuvix.

 

[Deckerd]

If Tuvix had no individual rights, say like when Kally murdered Sharon in BSG, or the interrogation teams on Pegasus were expected to rape the Cylons to keep them down and under heel... I wonder if they would have raped the male Cylons too? because if it's part of the guidebook, since the female Captain was making sure this was happening to a "woman" she once loved, it was totally personal for Admiral Kane, but still it was clinical rape and not recreational rape in theory... It wasn't a very good theory which is Why Heilo and the Tyrol (accidentally) killed the rapist interrogator which started a civil war between Battlestars.

It was torture, in fact. I brought up this very subject many years ago when Hermiod was complaining that the women in BSG were unrealistically strong (the boxing match is a good case in point). I agreed but asked why it was that the cylon women got raped but the men just got blown out airlocks (aside from one torture session which steered clear of the genitalia). He went off in the huff or something.

 

[Guy Gardener]

From what little I know about modern real world torture, it seems that the Americans these days believe that traditionalists from the middle east view women as so beneath them that it's comparable to rape to become forced to think of their female interrogator as an equal, not that actual preconcepts of equality actual mean anything once the real torture starts.

The problem with damaging the genitals with anything more invasive than blunt trauma is that, you have to pause the interrogation to render medical aid. The inquisitor has to decide before you start how valuable the information your interogatee has that you can skirt the line of killing this person when you just want to lightly damage them while forcing the not completely accurate conclusion that the pain they are feeling is intolerable.

Sodomy is an odd form of torture for man on man. Is it psychological or are you using an oversized phalli which is designed to wreck the anal cavity in a way that a penis never could. A homophobe can be chilled just from the thought of losing their bumginity which is complete weak sauce and may have been a device built into the ethnicity to create gentler potentials of torture. Regardless, sodomy quickly loses it's impact psychologically after certain thresholds have been demolished, and the sphincter quickly becomes receptive to anything smaller than a cucumber, and anything larger will just kill or hospitalize your subject, which is totally counter-productive.

Subjects were being completely broken at Gitmo (a couple years ago, before the press had a hissy fit.) just because the lads in charge were burning copies of the Quran in front of them. Apparently these terrorists would rather betray their cohorts than see another quran be burnt because you know it's more important to keep on gods side than your brothers in arms.

Feminizing a man through rape is childish, when the other tools at a torturous hands dehumanizes them. How can it be worse to be a female than be nothing? Obviously feminizing is a half effort, and maybe even a day in the park where the torturer can get maximum information from an idiot before they might have to become truly monstrous and cut some fingers off?

Cross dressing is not always punishable by death in Abu dhabi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_homosexuality_laws.svg

There's an episode of Supernatural where they tied Rick Worthy (Who once played Noah Lessing and a Cyclon who Starbuck murdered without torturing) to a chair because he was the King of the Vampires and hammered rail road spikes through his hands until sang like a canary.

Dudes typecast.

 

[Deckerd]

I think you misunderstand the purpose of torture. It isn't to gain information because it almost never works in that respect.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Not all interrogation is torture and not all torture is interrogation, but there's definitely some honest overlap.

 

[teya]

^Didn't Janeway commandeer Tuvix's life to get Tuvok and Neelix back? If it was wrong for Tuvix to commandeer their lifes it was also wrong for Janeway to commandeer Tuvix's life? And yes it does matter if he was sentient, under Federation law he should have been afforded the same rights as any other living being. He after all had no say in his creation, you can't blame him simply because he existed.

No, look at it this way, when you return stolen property from a thief to it's original owner, you are not stealing anything.

A thief makes a conscious decision to steal something: there is intent.

Tuvix stole nothing. He was the result of a symbiogenetic process. No intent.

 

[teya]

In fact IMHO the person most morally wrong was the Doctor, but I will concede that he was very young and probably not fully sentient at that time.

^ Yeah.. that's why people are trying to dehumanize Tuvix in their arguments. Calling him an accident, Brit's statement of "his" so called life, apparently him not having a "title" to live. It's quite standard from a psychological point of view for people to do this to justify the death of someone in their own mind.

No that is a logical reasoning, born from a whole lot of life experience. It's not that people do not care about poor Tuvix, it just that they care more about Tuvok and Neelix. But if you care so much maybe you can volunteer to be an amalgamated person. One thing I know for sure, no one gets my body until I am completely done with it.

Let's see...

You've taken the argument to the extreme in this post. The Doctor is operating as any physician would: that's the oath a physician takes when he becomes a doctor.

And you're saying that his abiding by that code of ethics is because he's "young" and "not fully sentient."

This follows exactly what R.Star is saying: it's to dehumanize Tuvix so that his death doesn't matter.

You are also following those who argued that I'm obviously not a parent because I believe it immoral to kill to save a child, and those who argued that I am immoral because I wouldn't kill another to save my sweetie.

So, I've learned something truly frightening in this thread: there are actually fans on this board who believe that it is perfectly reasonable and moral to kill an innocent person to save someone you love.

That's totally mind-boggling.

ETA: Either that, or you're all simply running out of arguments to justify your belief that St Kathryn of Voyager never makes a mistake or never makes a difficult call that even she might not completely agree with.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Receiving stolen goods is a crime.

If Tuvix forwarded those stolen gods on a little further into a fertile womb?

Since Tuvok and Neelix had no interest in becoming fathers (again), before they had become rintergrated, would Janeway be able to insist on an abortion of the foetus as the power of atorney holding Tuvok and Neelix's proxy?

Repossession is not a crime.

 

[Brit]

You are also following those who argued that I'm obviously not a parent because I believe it immoral to kill to save a child, and those who argued that I am immoral because I wouldn't kill another to save my sweetie.

So, I've learned something truly frightening in this thread: there are actually fans on this board who believe that it is perfectly reasonable and moral to kill an innocent person to save someone you love.

That's totally mind-boggling.

ETA: Either that, or you're all simply running out of arguments to justify your belief that St Kathryn of Voyager never makes a mistake or never makes a difficult call that even she might not completely agree with.

No, what is completely mind boggling here is your lack of understanding the basis of this problem, so I will say it loud and clear. Tuvix is not the donor in this case he is the recipient, and according to US law upheld by the Supreme Court you cannot coerce someone into giving up a part of his body. You cannot even harvest organs from a corpse without permission. The autonomy of the individual's body extend past death even.

Tuvix is a thief and therefore isn't entitled to the possession or use of what he has stolen, no matter how he come by it. He was not a thief until that moment when he decided to keep what he found.

Apparently it is ok to dehumanize Tuvok and Neelix, in favor of Tuvix, that is hardly the argument anyway. The argument is who actually owns the property, and while that may seem unsavory to some of you, it is the only fact that can come into play. Bottom line, we are talking about properity. Tuvok and Neelix are entitled to their own bodies, in the same way Kes is entitled to her lung, so yes she could in certain circumstances ask for it back. She contracted to give that lung to Neelix not to Tuvix, and if you change the contract it becomes null and void.

 

[teya]

You are also following those who argued that I'm obviously not a parent because I believe it immoral to kill to save a child, and those who argued that I am immoral because I wouldn't kill another to save my sweetie.

So, I've learned something truly frightening in this thread: there are actually fans on this board who believe that it is perfectly reasonable and moral to kill an innocent person to save someone you love.

That's totally mind-boggling.

ETA: Either that, or you're all simply running out of arguments to justify your belief that St Kathryn of Voyager never makes a mistake or never makes a difficult call that even she might not completely agree with.

No, what is completely mind boggling here is your lack of understanding the basis of this problem, so I will say it loud and clear. Tuvix is not the donor in this case he is the recipient, and according to US law upheld by the Supreme Court you cannot coerce someone into giving up a part of his body. You cannot even harvest organs from a corpse without permission. The autonomy of the individual's body extend past death even.

Tuvix is a thief and therefore isn't entitled to the possession or use of what he has stolen, no matter how he come by it. He was not a thief until that moment when he decided to keep what he found.

Apparently it is ok to dehumanize Tuvok and Neelix, in favor of Tuvix, that is hardly the argument anyway. The argument is who actually owns the property, and while that may seem unsavory to some of you, it is the only fact that can come into play. Bottom line, we are talking about properity. Tuvok and Neelix are entitled to their own bodies, in the same way Kes is entitled to her lung, so yes she could in certain circumstances ask for it back. She contracted to give that lung to Neelix not to Tuvix, and if you change the contract it becomes null and void.

This is the most convoluted logic I've heard in a long, long, long time.

By your reasoning, the folks who donated their son's organs to my sweetie and five other people, could have come back 2 years later and said, "oh, we've decided we don't like that hippie guy who got one of the kidneys, so we're going to take it back."

Sorry. Doesn't work that way.

And *you're* the one missing the entire basis of the episode.

Tuvix is neither a donor nor a recipient.

Tuvix is a sentient being who was created by a process of reproduction called symbiogenesis. He stole nothing. He had no culpability in his own creation. He was the product of 3 parents: Tuvok, Neelix & an alien orchid.

He was recognized by Captain Janeway as sentient. She assigned him to the bridge, so he was obviously competent. She praised him in her logs.

Under Federation law, sentient beings have rights: and the basis of those rights is the right to self-determination.

Contrary to your assertion, the Doctor is absolutely in the right.

Bottom line, we are talking about a living being, not property. And in saying that he is property, you are getting into an ethical morass that I don't think you want to be getting into...

 

[Brit]

Taya, prove he is sentient, prove anyone is sentient. You see what you want to see, and it is colored by your experience. What makes you wrong is your instance that everyone believe as you do. And you don't know me, you've never wanted to know me, so keep your assessments of me to your self and stick to the conversation topic. And bottom line the only thing you can consider is property because every other way of looking at this is emotional.

 

[Winterwind]

I'm late to the thread but...

Yes, absolutely the right decision. Tuvix... Kill it! Kill it now!

I never cared for either character separately so together it must assuredly go!

 

[Melakon]

I was never good at science, but isn't symbiogenesis a biological process? Tuvix was created through a transporter accident, not biology.