It really is DS9's fault for establishing how super-illegal being Gattaca'd is.
As far as Starfleet itself being a relative hotbed of augmentation, that might be a matter of looking where the light is in terms of finding unregistered augments. Starfleet personnel are subject to frequent, detailed medical examinations, and they're most likely to encounter extreme situations where being able to exceed their species' norms is a matter of life or death, exposing themselves. If there really are hundreds of cases, even amongst millions of Starfleet personnel, that could point to a sizable underground of genetically augmented individuals in the Federation who just slip by, people from planets with a history of it like Una, or people like Bashir who had an augmentation to correct some infirmity that wasn't quite bad enough to qualify for a legal exemption, maybe even most of them didn't leapfrog the bell curve like Bashir did, and ended up being perfectly normal.
I would generally agree that this is on DS9, but I also feel like there's a difference between what they established, and what we see? Having augmentation performed is illegal, and Bashir's parents face consequences for it. But
being augmented doesn't, as far as I can tell, earn him any censure or prejudice. Maybe a little wariness from some offscreen higher-ups? But there was no idea of apparent bias or bigotry present. And there also wasn't any concept of 'Augment DNA being passed down to descendants' as we're dealing with now; genetic manipulation had to be a conscious, intentional act performed on an individual for which that individual (or their guardians, depending on the age) could be held accountable for knowingly violating the law; it wasn't a state of being for which someone was subject to censure or bias. The issue was the breaking of the law required to *get* to that state, not simply being in that state at all.
The idea of descendants and restrictions on them or prejudices against them (as well as the whole Illyrian nonsense that I don't even want to get into, ugh what a mess), is all in SNW. And it really does take what DS9 established and spin it in a direction that DS9 did not seem to intend. (Hence the whole retcons-on-top-of-retcons thing.)
But that's also a tension in Star Trek, and real-life. What's more affirming for someone like Geordi, using a prosthetic to mitigate his disability, or getting new organic eyes to cure it entirely? It goes into some of the questions about deaf culture, and if it's necessarily a good thing to give everyone the ability to hear surgically when it would result in the loss of a language and subculture. The Star Trek universe settled on to a bit of a puritanical, biologically essentialist view of what's morally right in terms of medical procedures and biological augmentations, one that's drifting further and further out of fashion with people who subscribe to the ideals about there being a place for everyone in the Trek future.
Yeah, that's... another topic. But I do find that to be a frustrating thing. Star Trek fights against Star Trek when the cultural ideals drift. Which either makes Star Trek a poor yardstick to derive morality from, or new creators gutless for abandoning established principles and shifting with the winds of culture wherever they may blow. (The clearest example I can think of is The Elysian Kingdom (et al.) vs. The Cage, Generations, and any number of other Trek properties throughout the years in terms of whether pleasant fantasy is any substitute for reality, or constitutes really living...
Anyhow, that is a very different discussion, on 20th century Trek vs. 21st century Trek, ethics and morality, and many other topics. Suffice it to say, I get what you are saying, and I am familiar with (and frustrated by) the phenomenon. But, I'd like to think that a writer worth their salt can resolve that tension in shifting ideologies without throwing Starfleet under the bus (as has been a common criticism across multiple shows since Star Trek returned in 2017; the tendency to create modern metaphors or changes in ideology within the show by making Starfleet lose its way, ethically).
It's one of the reasons CLB convinced me way back when that the right move for Star Trek isn't more continuations or AU remakes, but going back to
the original "Star Trek is..." pitch and starting from scratch in terms of projecting the future out from today in terms of both realistic technological development and social issues/viewpoints.
Hmmmmm. I can see the merit in that approach in terms of getting messaging back on track. But at this point, the Star Trek future of the first fifty years has become as much of a living, alternate setting as, say, Middle Earth, that I'd hate to lose stories set in that 'period' at the same time...
Still, I can certainly see where you're coming from, there...
Their concept of crime could also be different; they have a group mind, and seem to be disinclined towards secrecy or even privacy, never mind subterfuge. If they only way anyone has of doing something against society's wellbeing is up-front and overt, that'd mean most violations would be prevented by the group seeing them coming. They also seem to have a strong sense of pragmatism, just as ruthless in their own way as Khan. They might see restoration/restitution as being impossible in cases like murder or other destructive acts (except, perhaps, by the perpetrator being rehabilitated and contributing to the health of the society they wronged rather than imposing more practical or moral cost on thewith incarceration or other punishments), so they don't bother with it.
That is a very interesting idea. I like it!
