Medical Science in Star Trek

[Orsino]

So I’ve been rewatching Star Trek on Netflix and have just watched a DS9 episode called Homefront.

The first thing that struck me about this episode was the creepy coincidence that the security footage of the bombing begins playing at “Time index 5.9.11”. Looking back at this episode there are some unfortunate parallels with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and hearing Worf say the words “Nine Eleven” in the episode was kind of weird.

The second thing that struck me was the depiction of Captain Sisko’s dad. The health problems experienced by Sisko’s dad are a major component of the episode’s subplot and it got me wondering about longevity and infirmity in Star Trek. There are a number of episodes of TNG and DS9 where people aged 100+ are depicted as healthy and active, and whilst it’s clear that humans aren’t immortal in Star Trek I can’t recall an episode where anyone dies of mundane natural causes (that is to say it’s always an accident or some weird fictional disease rather than heart disease/COPD/dementias/cancers/etc). As a clinician myself I was curious enough about this to register on this forum so I could ask the people most likely to be able to give me an answer.

What is the average life expectancy in the 24th century? How old can humans get to be? What does the average person die from? Are the diseases of our time any threat to people in the future?

And what of mental health? In TNG the ship has a counsellor but she seems to deal exclusively with neurosis and relationship problems and in the episode of DS9 where they travel back in time Bashir seems to imply there was a highly effective treatment for schizophrenia as early as the 2020s. Do clinical depression, schizophrenia, psychosis, personality disorders or OCD exist in the future? What about autism and intellectual disabilities?

Exactly how advanced is medicine in Star Trek? And if it is as advanced as it seems why does anyone ever die of natural causes?

 

[Tracy Trek]

I can’t recall an episode where anyone dies of mundane natural causes (that is to say it’s always an accident or some weird fictional disease rather than heart disease/COPD/dementias/cancers/etc.

I think some of their weird fictional diseases mirror some of the things you have listed. There are the plots of an alternate reality Picard suffering from a type of dementia in the TNG finale. And also Sarek in the episode about him. And Tuvok in the Voyager finale. Although Sarek and Tuvok were suffering from the Vulcan equivalent of dementia.

McCoy in the TNG pilot was 130+. That's the oldest I recall for a human.

 

[Tenacity]

I assume you mean Humans?

Julian Bashir was (iirc) perfectly normal mentally, so his parents had a illegal procedure performed on him to make him intellectual superior. This might say something about the future culture. That wouldn't be too hard seeing happen in today's culture if the procedure was available.

In Remember Me, Beverly's friend Quase (sp?) was old and she remarked on his age and said he might have fallen behind something and would hard for security to find for that reason.

In a fantasy recollection, Picard's mother was old and seemingly frail.

Depictions of death by completely natural causes are apparently absent from Trek.

Barclay stuttered, I'm not sure if that qualifies as a physiological condition. For some reason Picard couldn't receive a natural heart to replace his damaged one.

 

[Shawnster]

Despite the fact that it was artificially induced by Ves Alkar, Troi was pronounced dead of kidney and renal failure in TNG's "Man of the People."

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Also remember Picard of the future has Irrimotic Syndrome.

I get the impression that all the highest percentage killers are cured but there's still rare and exotic conditions that kill people. It's unclear why Picard had to have a mechanical heart.

 

[Tracy Trek]

Despite the fact that it was artificially induced by Ves Alkar, Troi was pronounced dead of kidney and renal failure in TNG's "Man of the People."

I thought that was what happened to the woman he brought with him that he pretended was his mother. But she was actually his vessel for negative emotions. I thought Troi was given a drug to temporarily stop her heart and breathing so Alkar would release his hold on her.

 

[The Wormhole]

What is the average life expectancy in the 24th century? How old can humans get to be? What does the average person die from? Are the diseases of our time any threat to people in the future?

In addition to the above mentioned McCoy being over 130 in TNG, in Homefront Joe Sisko makes a comment about how he plans to celebrate "at least 50 more birthdays." Brock Peters was 68 when he filmed the episode, assuming Joe Sisko is the same age, he expects to make it to 118.

If you want to bring in stuff from the novels, nearly every TOS character is still alive in the post-Nemesis era in the 24th century. "Nearly," actually, I'm pretty sure all of them except Kirk are still going. Hell, even in the 23rd century, Archer is possibly still alive during Trek XI.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Julian Bashir was (iirc) perfectly normal mentally, so his parents had a illegal procedure performed on him to make him intellectual superior. This might say something about the future culture. That wouldn't be too hard seeing happen in today's culture if the procedure was available.

No, he was developmentally slower than other children his age.

BASHIR: I was six. 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..

 

[Horizons96]

The first thing that struck me about this episode was the creepy coincidence that the security footage of the bombing begins playing at “Time index 5.9.11”. Looking back at this episode there are some unfortunate parallels with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and hearing Worf say the words “Nine Eleven” in the episode was kind of weird.

What, you mean a rogue group secretly conducting a 'false flag' attack, in order to force the hand of legislation makers by creating a climate of fear in the populace? Nahhhhhhhhhh

 

[Tim Thomason]

O'BRIEN: "What would I tell her? 'You know, honey, every time I'm about to go into battle I record a message for you and Molly telling how much I love you, just in case.'"
DAX: "She'd probably think it was sweet."
O'BRIEN: "It'd probably scare the hell out of her. To be honest, it scares the hell out of me. Every time I record one of these I think, this is it. This is the one they're going to end up hearing."
DAX: "It'll never happen."
O'BRIEN: "What makes you say that?"
DAX: "Because when you've lived eight lifetimes, you develop certain instincts. And my instincts tell me that you, Miles Edward O'Brien, are going to live to be a hundred and forty and die in bed, surrounded by family and friends."

That quote has always been my go-to when thinking of Star Trek-human life expectancy. 140 seems to be a long (but perhaps not overly long) lifetime, and "dying in bed" implies a death by natural causes is to be expected here. I imagine organ failure of some sort is the cause (perhaps their is a limit to what the magic pills can accomplish). Wikipedia tells me that "VO2Max" (the volume of the oxygen flow to the cardiac muscle) decreases with age, and becomes deadly after 125. I'm not sure how this works with Star Trek's ability to replace human hearts, but they did show us that that was not so easy-to-do (for some reason) in Samaritan Snare.

 

[Orsino]

I assume you mean Humans?

Barclay stuttered, I'm not sure if that qualifies as a physiological condition. For some reason Picard couldn't receive a natural heart to replace his damaged one.

Yeah, I'm confining this to humans as we have a real world context for human physiology and the health problems they face and can therefore make meaningful comparisons. And it is interesting that you bring up Barclay, given how advanced future medicine is generally it's weird that he apparently couldn't be helped with his stammer or his anxiety, to be honest Troi doesn't seem like a very good counsellor. Is mention ever made of psychologists or psychiatrists in Star Trek?

Also remember Picard of the future has Irrimotic Syndrome.

I get the impression that all the highest percentage killers are cured but there's still rare and exotic conditions that kill people. It's unclear why Picard had to have a mechanical heart.

Ah yes, I recall Picard's future dementia, but again it is a fictional disease and kind of raises more questions than it answers. Are we supposed to interpret Irrimotic Syndrome as a mundane disease that is meant to have always existed in this universe or is it some sort of exotic disease that only exists in the future?

That quote has always been my go-to when thinking of Star Trek-human life expectancy. 140 seems to be a long (but perhaps not overly long) lifetime, and "dying in bed" implies a death by natural causes is to be expected here. I imagine organ failure of some sort is the cause (perhaps their is a limit to what the magic pills can accomplish). Wikipedia tells me that "VO2Max" (the volume of the oxygen flow to the cardiac muscle) decreases with age, and becomes deadly after 125. I'm not sure how this works with Star Trek's ability to replace human hearts, but they did show us that that was not so easy-to-do (for some reason) in Samaritan Snare.

Okay, so it seems like human life expectancy is somewhere between 110 and 140? And people don't seem to die from any of the diseases we're familiar with but instead from a wide range of rare, exotic incurable diseases that eventually get them.

But organ transplantation seems to be trivially easy in the future. I recall an episode of DS9 where the Bajoran pope guy gets some sort of radiation poisoning and Bashir replaces all his organs one by one one, including half of his brain. And whilst the guy eventually dies it's made clear in the episode that Bashir could replace the other half of his brain (at the risk of taking away his humanity) or could keep him alive indefinitely in stasis whilst he studies his condition.

Between the ability to transplant every organ and being able to put people in stasis it is kinda hard to see why anyone ever dies. Perhaps in the future there's a social expectation that once people get to about 140 they should be allowed to die naturally?

 

[The Old Mixer]

As I recall, among the other things that the Ent-D crew scoffed at about the 20th-century humans that they found in "The Neutral Zone" was the fear of death that led them to put themselves in cryogenic stasis in the first place.

 

[Tenacity]

Is mention ever made of psychologists or psychiatrists in Star Trek

In TOS there was quite a few mentions. Two episodes took place in mental institutions, Harry Mudd received court ordered treatment previous to our meeting him, and (iirc) McCoy had training in the area (but perhaps not a degree).

Perhaps in the future there's a social expectation that once people get to about 140 they should be allowed to die naturally?

You can run from the Sandmen, but the homer always finds you.

 

[Griffeytrek]

In "Sub Rosa" Crushers Grandmother is presumed to have died of old age/natural causes. Oh and the incest rape ghost.

 

[The Wormhole]

No, he was developmentally slower than other children his age.

I never interpreted that as proof that he was "stupid" or had a developmental problem, just that he had no interest in what his teachers were saying or perhaps a limited attention span. His parents went and got the modifications out of embarrassment, but it is possible even without enhancements he would still have ended up a normal functioning adult. Maybe he wouldn't be graduating second in his class in Medical School, but I don't think he'd be a total moron either.

Oh and the incest rape ghost.

It isn't really "incest" since he isn't actually related to her.

 

[Tenacity]

Grandma Howard died of repeated multiple-orgasms.

Damned ghost.

 

[Shawnster]

I thought that was what happened to the woman he brought with him that he pretended was his mother. But she was actually his vessel for negative emotions. I thought Troi was given a drug to temporarily stop her heart and breathing so Alkar would release his hold on her.

Oh yeah, they had to "kill" Troi.

 

[Shawnster]

Found one.

From DS9's "The Storyteller"

FAREN: The Sirah, how is he?
BASHIR: I wish I had better news. He's suffering from systemic organ failure brought on by an accelerated rate of cellular decay. His body's surrendering to old age.
FAREN: Is there anything you can do?
BASHIR: I can keep him comfortable and relatively free of pain. Other than that, it's just a matter of time. I'm sorry.

Just for context, Bashir and O'Brien were on a mission to Bajor. They could have whisked the Sirah away for medical treatments. This was before they knew what was about to happen and that they couldn't leave (or that the Sirah was going to die that night).

 

[matthunter]

Admiral Mark Jameson (the guy who took the de-aging drug in TNG's Too Short a Season) joined Starfleet around the turn of the century according to Memory Alpha. Assuming this was age 18, he'd only be 82 as of season 1 TNG at most, though he had also suffered Iversson's Syndrome that confined him to a wheelchair.

As is typical, writers tend to assign ages based on the actors/physical appearance (including makeup), forgetting that the setting might mean we can't judge on appearance. This happens routinely in Warhammer 40k, where humans with access to rejuvenat treatments might appear in their 30-40s even if they are pushing 100, whilst other high-ranking members of the Imperium who should have access to the same drugs are mentioned as "getting too old" at 50!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Irrimotic syndrome could just be a disease which always existed in humans, only humans never stayed healthy for long enough for it to be differentiated from other forms of dementia.

There's probably a whole slew of diseases that only affect 130 year olds. Humans always had them but never got old enough to die from them.

Also there are probably whole new ones that were introduced through alien DNA added to the gene pool.

Like, one gene mutation some Vulcans have which produces a protein which is harmless to Vulcans but toxic to humans.