Vidiians and cloning

[Taelon]

Why didn't the Vidiians use cloning technology to grow organs as and when they're needed?

If the TNG episode Up The Long Ladder is any indication, sufficiently advanced cloning technology could generate a fully-grown collection of organs within a day or two. And the Vidiians medical technolgy seems like it should be sufficiently advanced.

Or have the Vidiians never even heard of cloning simply for the sake of a story trying to get some drama and plot?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Poor people used clone meat.

Rich people wanted fresh alien meat.

Now that I said it, doesn't it seem obvious?



If you look at the duplication of B'Elanna in Faces, it's also pretty obvious that that's the same technology/principle employed by the schism in Deadlock. Either the schism was reverse engineered into technology, or the schism wasn't a natural event but a portable trap, a spacemine, one of thousands they had laying about all over unclaimed space.

Think about it.

If there were thousands of these schisms all over the derelict provinces neighbouring Vidiian controlled space, that means that the hunting parties could take untold numbers of ships and crews, billions of people, and there would be no evidence of those harvested aliens being taken, because every taken traveller still arrived at their final destination despite being unknowingly doubled and sent to a meat packing factory for public dissemination.

If billions of poor Vidiians and hundreds of thousands of rich Vidiians are afflicted, the lost (undoubled) ships are going to stack up and become noticeable to even the most clueless space detective tying to figure out if they need to tell some one up the ladder that it's time to go on a war footing.

100s, even thousands of captured aliens is not going to make a dent in Vidiia's diseased population.

...

There was an air of drama that seemed to reflect that every one still allowed to walk in the open on Vidiia still looked like a Vidiian and that the full effects Phage was being suppressed to the public, or at least the idiots that don't want to take notice.

Only the symptomatic were evicted from the home world in a frenzy to cannibalize any alien they ran across?

Maybe Vidiia admits that the harvesting is happening to their friends, but these horrible things that are happening has nothing to do with the official government and the official government cannot stop it and cannot be blamed for the endless harvesting of the space lanes. Which sound's just like what Pakistan and a few other places might have said about terrorism once or twice.

This was an allegory for AIDS of course?

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Poor people used clone meat.

Rich people wanted fresh alien meat.

Now that I said it, doesn't it seem obvious?



If you look at the duplication of B'Elanna in Faces, it's also pretty obvious that that's the same technology/principle employed by the schism in Deadlock. Either the schism was reverse engineered into technology, or the schism wasn't a natural event but a portable trap, a spacemine, one of thousands they had laying about all over unclaimed space.

Think about it.

If there were thousands of these schisms all over the derelict provinces neighbouring Vidiian controlled space, that means that the hunting parties could take untold numbers of ships and crews, billions of people, and there would be no evidence of those harvested aliens being taken, because every taken traveller still arrived at their final destination despite being unknowingly doubled and sent to a meat packing factory for public dissemination.

If billions of poor Vidiians and hundreds of thousands of rich Vidiians are afflicted, the lost (undoubled) ships are going to stack up and become noticeable to even the most clueless space detective tying to figure out if they need to tell some one up the ladder that it's time to go on a war footing.

100s, even thousands of captured aliens is not going to make a dent in Vidiia's diseased population.

...

There was an air of drama that seemed to reflect that every one still allowed to walk in the open on Vidiia still looked like a Vidiian and that the full effects Phage was being suppressed to the public, or at least the idiots that don't want to take notice.

Only the symptomatic were evicted from the home world in a frenzy to cannibalize any alien they ran across?

Maybe Vidiia admits that the harvesting is happening to their friends, but these horrible things that are happening has nothing to do with the official government and the official government cannot stop it and cannot be blamed for the endless harvesting of the space lanes. Which sound's just like what Pakistan and a few other places might have said about terrorism once or twice.

This was an allegory for AIDS of course?

But the Vidians are manifestly not aware of the second voyager and that blows your theory to pieces, sorry.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They were ignoring the one they were going to let go?

That's not odd at all.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

They were ignoring the one they were going to let go?

That's not odd at all.

Sorry, but I don't buy that. It's more than a little out there.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It could be that if a Vidiian was cloned, the clone would also have the disease.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

It could be that if a Vidiian was cloned, the clone would also have the disease.

Well, they could clone him, using a cell that wasn't infected. I don't know of any disease that infects all the cells of your body at once. Then again, this is ST, anything can and will happen.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ IIRC, the Phage attacked a Vidiian's body down to the DNA level, so I don't think cloning would have helped them.

 

[cylkoth]

Yes, but that doesn't explain why they wouldn't clone the dna of others. But I guess, that would eliminate them being a scary threat, and there wouldn't have been an episode about them.

They obviously possess a level of medical technology that would make cloning tissue samples from donors more than easy. Yet they choose to act as body part vampires instead. A cloned skin suit and Mission Impossible face mask, and, there you go. Replace in 6 to 12 months.
Tax deductible. Covered by your medical plan.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I always assumed that it wasn't possible to clone *only* a specific body part - that it had to be the whole body at once.

 

[Anwar]

The Phage would mutate, spread from the infected Vidiian DNA to the new clone parts and start all over again.

They didn't find any DNA capable of truly resisting the Phage until they met B'Ellana.

 

[cylkoth]

The Phage would mutate, spread from the infected Vidiian DNA to the new clone parts and start all over again.

They didn't find any DNA capable of truly resisting the Phage until they met B'Ellana.

They obviously possess a level of medical technology that would make cloning tissue samples from donors more than easy. Yet they choose to act as body part vampires instead. A cloned skin suit and Mission Impossible face mask, and, there you go. Replace in 6 to 12 months.
.

Sure this wouldn't be a cure, but, it would be the next best thing for them to do, rather than attacking-and killing people, further stigmatizing their entire species. Who'd want to help them when they are committing murder just to survive?

A handheld transporter capable of beaming an organ out of a living body, while leaving that body otherwise intact, is an astonishingly developed piece of advanced technology. Cloning from those organs, or entire bodies from willing donors would vastly increase the quality of Vidian life, while continuing to search for a cure.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

I always assumed that it wasn't possible to clone *only* a specific body part - that it had to be the whole body at once.

They could capture one unaffected alien, clone him a thousand times, the way they cloned Riker and Polasky in that TNG episode and then release him. They get all the body parts they need and no alien has been sacrificed in the process. That seems simple enough.

 

[Anwar]

The Phage would mutate, spread from the infected Vidiian DNA to the new clone parts and start all over again.

They didn't find any DNA capable of truly resisting the Phage until they met B'Ellana.

They obviously possess a level of medical technology that would make cloning tissue samples from donors more than easy. Yet they choose to act as body part vampires instead. A cloned skin suit and Mission Impossible face mask, and, there you go. Replace in 6 to 12 months.
.

Sure this wouldn't be a cure, but, it would be the next best thing for them to do, rather than attacking-and killing people, further stigmatizing their entire species. Who'd want to help them when they are committing murder just to survive?

A handheld transporter capable of beaming an organ out of a living body, while leaving that body otherwise intact, is an astonishingly developed piece of advanced technology. Cloning from those organs, or entire bodies from willing donors would vastly increase the quality of Vidian life, while continuing to search for a cure.

They'd been fighting off the Phage for thousands of years and no one lifted a finger to try and help them in all that time. Obviously they go to their extreme measures BECAUSE no one tried to help them.

They could capture one unaffected alien, clone him a thousand times, the way they cloned Riker and Polasky in that TNG episode and then release him

The Phage would mutate to destroy that one alien's bodyparts before they'd be able to spread them very far thus rendering any aid they'd get from him useless. They were trying to find the right mix and match combo to permanently end the Phage and didn't find any hope until Torres.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Well, the Think Tank cured them so I guess the debate is moot now...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Also, just because the Vidiians are advanced in some areas doesn't mean that they must be advanced in all. Technology isn't a monolithic entity that progresses in all areas simultaneously. They can have strong abilities in some areas of medicine but be totally unable to function in others.

I mean, modern 21st-century Earth medical science is able to perform transplants quite readily, yet we can't clone humans...can we?

 

[Guy Gardener]

...Or they made it a thousand times worse.

"Unrecognizable" is not always a good thing.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Also, just because the Vidiians are advanced in some areas doesn't mean that they must be advanced in all. Technology isn't a monolithic entity that progresses in all areas simultaneously. They can have strong abilities in some areas of medicine but be totally unable to function in others.

I mean, modern 21st-century Earth medical science is able to perform transplants quite readily, yet we can't clone humans...can we?

The cloned sheep was sickly and died quite fast, so we still have progress to make in the area of sheep-cloning.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

...Or they made it a thousand times worse.

"Unrecognizable" is not always a good thing.

You're speaking of the Think Tank, yes, they are capable of anything, especially the worst.

Maybe the Vidians didn't pay the price and the think tank turned them into an earlier form of their own species, like our cro-magnon or neanderthal... So they were cured but unable to maintain a civilization...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Also, just because the Vidiians are advanced in some areas doesn't mean that they must be advanced in all. Technology isn't a monolithic entity that progresses in all areas simultaneously. They can have strong abilities in some areas of medicine but be totally unable to function in others.

I mean, modern 21st-century Earth medical science is able to perform transplants quite readily, yet we can't clone humans...can we?

We are not allowed to, but this is part of all that hoo haw about stem cells.

They wouldn't bother to make laws against something that was impossible?

Are their laws against raping unicorns?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cloning#Uses.2C_actual_and_potential

You can claim that you are making meat, but even without a brain that is a person, who has a soul, who needs to give you permission to harvest their organs, who cant because they don't have a brain. If you squint cloning can also be seen as slavery.

If you want to see something sad about clones, watch Never let me go. Clones are raised as children at bordingschools, and then free range in communes, after they turn twenty, they begin having surgeries, having bits removed. Most clones can survive 1 or 2 surgeries losing a kidney or a lung. No one survives 3. When you die on the table, that is when they finally take everything.

Oh. It's a love story.