I'm not a Trekkie, but I see this mentality a lot in fantasy settings. "Why would there be wheel chair users when a simple healing spell would cure it?" 🙄
STRICTLY PROHIBITED (unless you're a good boy doctor)
His parents paid the price.
The iron price, or gold (pressed latinum)?
This is under the assumption that every single being being born anywhere is being gene tested and born at a hospital which is statistically impossible.
Is over thinking tv shows a disability? Asking for a friend, obviously.
If me writing a 20 page essay about my favorite TV show and being a major contributor to the wiki counts as a disability, then I want a parking permit.
Why wouldn’t you cure things at birth if you already know how to? Like, you know the kid is going to be blind, and you could just give the mom a shot to change that, but you’re gonna choose to let the kid be born blind? I dunno, that’s kinda messed up.
Because blindness isn't a disability in the Federation. Geordi lives a full and happy life, and, as OP mentioned, is actually able to save the entire crew specifically because he's blind.
"Fixing" his blindness in a compassionate, post-scarcity world that has the tools to allow someone to succeed no matter what physical characteristics they possess is like "fixing" a baby's hair color. It doesn't make the child's life easier, so what's the point other than eugenics?
The Federation is inherently plural, and we see several different attitudes toward disability by different people throughout the series.
Geordi is blind from birth. No one holds it against the guy. He wears a prosthetic vision device called a VISOR which is kind of the vision equivalent of a modern cochlear implant, there's an implant in his brain that an external sensor device hooks to. It's not a perfect solution, it gives him headaches, but it allows him to see and function like a sighted person, he can even see outside of the visual spectrum. Several times throughout the series we see him working with his doctor to maintain and adjust his implant when it gives him problems. Several times we see glimpses of possible futures where he has swapped his VISOR for alternative treatment methods, and the canonical future seen in the films has him using implants in his eyes, or even seeing with natural eyes because of that one fountain of youth planet. Throughout the show, people mention other treatments he could be using, but for the run of TNG he prefers his VISOR, which his doctor provides continuous care for. We see him go to Dr. Crusher to have his VISOR worked on repeatedly throughout the show.
Worf was paralyzed in an accident once. A heavy thing fell on him and broke his spine. Klingon culture is extremely ablest and he struggles to stand being seen by his friends or family in this condition, he wants to kill himself rather than live like this. He begrudgingly allows the doctors to try a treatment but quickly deems it unacceptable, so they INVENT SPINAL CORD REPLACEMENT SURGERY for him so that he can continue living his life on his terms. "There's nothing for it, we're just gonna have to grow a new backbone and central nervous system for the man."
Riva, the mediator/diplomat from the episode "Loud as a Whisper," is deaf. In his words, "Born, and hope to die." He has no intention of having his deafness cured or worked around, viewing it as a trait of his noble family and as a practical asset. He usually communicates through a trio of translators, but when they are killed, instead of attempting to cure his deafness via technology or medicine, Picard says "Okay it's time for US to learn sign language so we can talk to this man." and Data picks it up the fastest and takes on the role of interpreter. Riva's mission is to bring two warring factions to the negotiating table, so he decides to use sign language as an exercise in learning to communicate with each other. Fun fact: The actor who played Riva is deaf in real life. He asked the producers of Star Trek to make an episode about deaf people and had a lot of creative input on the episode.
===
If there is a through-line to how the Federation treats people with disabilities, it is to prioritize the patient's decisions. Geordi receives continuous care for his prosthetic vision. They fly in civilization's leading expert to do an experimental surgery on Worf. The conversation with Riva goes "We can-" "No thank you." "Okay."
As for this:
| Geordi...is actually able to save the entire crew specifically because he’s blind.
As Data points out in A Measure of a Man, though it would measurably improve a crewmember's ability to function because he could see a wider range of the EM spectrum, the Federation does not force members of Starfleet to replace their natural eyes with cybernetic implants.
This is also set in a universe full of sentient aliens with all different kinds of physical abilities and senses. Several species are empathic or telepathic able to sense and/or transmit their own emotions and thoughts. No humans can do that. Again in Measure of a Man, Picard hand waves off a demonstration of Data bending an unbendable girder because "Several sentient alien species possess mega strength." There's one episode with aliens that have a kind of solar powered heat ray thing (the plot required the aliens to be able to take hostages and they needed a weapon that Lt. Yar couldn't confiscate). In a society made up of multiple sentient species that evolved with vastly different physical abilities, I think your whole concept of "handicapped" or "disabled" needs to shift.
save the entire crew specifically because he’s blind
so you take away a persons autonomy to have the potential to be able to see and live a life with natural sight as you see a use for it.
You did a 360 there on the ethics and wandered into utilitarian territory reducing people to things.
You might not define it as a disability but it’s still taking autonomy from someone. They could just as well invent a tool to help save the crew. There is more than one option for things such as that rather than reducing a persons entire definition to their difference and how useful it is to you.
Human condition is more than their differences or their use to you.
Which is one of the arguments against the Federations ban on genetic manipulation. There are plenty of others against it. There's no one answer to this situation, unfortunately.
Why the hell would it be eugenics to cure disabilities. If you could turn me from a trans chick into a cisbabe, I'd be down. I mean on one hand periods will suck, but on the other, maybe my fucking hair will grow out!
I’m in the same position, but if I could choose between the best hearing aids the 24th century can offer or repairing my ears, then I’m going full Geordi. Much in the same way I know some trans women wouldn’t make the choice we would.
And that’s the thing, routinely Star Trek shows disabled characters having choices in how to approach their situation and making the choices they feel are right for them. Some people will take a 5% chance of negative consequences to get their legs back, and others will take a futuristic mobility aid instead.
We actually already see this in cochlear implants. They’re difficult; unpleasant, and would give you hearing you don’t otherwise have
Why is Barclay disabled. Unless being a perv is a disability.
Lt. Barclay has an anxiety disorder which greatly interferes with his ability to live his life as he wants to.
He appears to be on the spectrum
Holodeck addiction is a disability I guess
Here is my take, assuming:
Situation 1:
Woman learns she is pregnant, say week 6. Gets a routine scan on the embryo. She discovers it has a genetic disorder. That will cause it to not be able to breathe well, running and playing will not be an option for your baby, they will survive; sweet no brainer there; splice in the fix doc. Correction is spliced in the next week, monitoring for rest of normal pregnancy.
Situation 2:
Woman learns she is pregnant, say week 6. Gets a routine scan on the embryo. Doctor says, looks like there is a genetic defect, the audio nerve is not going to develop normally, your baby will hear badly at birth, and then over the next two years will go permanently deaf. Implants could fix this issue after birth, and living as a deaf person is not difficult. However we can ensure that the nerve develops normally and your baby will have perfectly normal hearing.
In situation 1, the obvious answer is to fix the issue, having life long breathing difficulties that could easily be avoided would be cruel.
In situation 2, in my opinion it would also be cruel to impose on a kid; hey we could have fixed your hearing in a safe and effective way, but we decided for you before you were born that you would be "special".
I get where people are coming from, but they are looking at it with 2024 eyes, not 2424 eyes. Why would you impose on a kid, who has no say in the matter, a disability? Because that is the choice you are making, you are imposing a disability on a child that does not need to be there.
We currently give women folate, to protect against neural tube defects; along with a bunch of other interventions. We are already "interfering" with the "natural" progress of pregnancy and birth, we are only going to get better at it.
And also the conflating of eugenics and fixing birth defects is completely off base. These are only related by the fact that breeding is involved; they have nothing in common beyond that. In the same way that my kitchen knives would make great stabbing weapons, but cooking and stabbing only really have the tools in common.
Fetus is developing normally, except it has no ocular nerves. There is no cure for this. Baby is born and neural interfaces are implanted, along with a device for feeding EM sensory data directly into the brain.
Ok but for scenario 2 have you asked the deaf? Many of us say to do just that. In fact we disproportionately fight the hearing by saying that infants cannot consent to cochlear implants
That is an interesting point, as you say infants cannot consent to implants. Which does raise ethical questions.
But you are, I think, still looking from a 2024 perspective, where none of the technologies are even remotely available.
If you can consider it from the 2424 perspective, the treatment is non-invasive, permanent, safe and effective. It has been the standard for 100 years. Star Trek medical tech is magical to us because it is simply a story, but consider if it were real, what argument could you make to withhold the treatment?
I would see this as similar to the anti-vax arguments; withholding vaccines from a child who then goes on to catch a life altering disease, is a form of abuse. The kid cannot make its own judgements or medical decisions, but it sure can catch polio.
Would deliberately withholding "cures" be considered child abuse?
That is a difficult question. I would err on the side of yes. With some caveats.
Not treating some serious genetic conditions when safe, effective and proven treatments are available. Could easily be construed as abuse.
When considering the Star Trek universe medical care is free and easily accessed. Treating these conditions would be the default.
Turning this the other way around, and looking at it from the point of view, that the technology is the standard. What argument could you make in favour of leaving the condition in place?
The deaf see it similar to how the intersex do, that it should be the individual’s choice when they’re old enough to decide.
And also the conflating of eugenics and fixing birth defects is completely off base
It's not off base and what you're describing is called liberal eugenics, or new eugenics.
[...] some critics, such as UC Berkeley sociologist Troy Duster, have argued that modern genetics is a "back door to eugenics".
I'm sure the laws set in place after the eugenics wars would be strict enough to not leave such wiggle room.
It doesn't really seem like in either situation I described that the treatment-enhancement gap has been breached.
There is no PGD, we are considering Star Trek levels of scanning technology. Both situations resulted from natural fertilisation, there was no group of potentials to select from.
The goal of eugenics, is unambiguously, to breed for some ideal. This resulted in some pretty dark times in the recent past.
Realistically, a lot of medical technology today is the antithesis of the eugenic ideal. Allowing those, who in the past, would have died from various causes to live. We at a species are the stronger for it.
https://youtu.be/bqm_Iq8rFeg?t=16
"Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness." Gene Roddenberry had the perfect response.
"No, by the 24th century, no one will care."
Meanwhile Shatner was stealing half a dozen of Kirk's toupées every season...
Let it be known, however, that Gene did say this after aggressively petitioning against Patrick Stewart as Captain. His baldness was specifically mentioned. According to Patrick anyway
well, he didn't mention that in the bloody video. I blame Patrick Stewart for making me look like a fool.
Patrick has been telling this story for a while at the panels, Frakes and others will tell it too. Sometimes it comes with that caveat and sometimes not. I'll see if I can find the clip where he talks about that.
Uh...ok.
The point about accomodation is the key here.
If being born without functioning legs isn't actually an impediment or challenge because society makes allowances for people without legs, then it's no longer a handicap!
If a blind person has options beyond merely having their sight "restored" to that of the baseline "normal", then they have options that might open up paths that regularly sighted people don't have, in which case their unique trait of being blind becomes an asset.
There's the secret to the utopia Star Trek positsv not that we try to "cute" everyone born different, but that we instead create opportunities for them to thrive as they are. In the future of Star Trek, the word "disability" is probably alien to them. Rather, they would describe someone in our time with such challenges as "disenfranchised" because we don't offer them opportunities.
My only problem with this is that Geordi made it clear more than once that not only would he rather just be able to see, but that his VISOR caused him constant pain. I wouldn't really call that accommodating for his blindness if that's what was required to get into Starfleet later.
And, of course, that was what made it so impactful when he finally had eyes that worked.
And then there was Melora on DS9. Starfleet could have done so many things to fulfill her dream of traveling the stars without having her be stuck in the chair in near-1g environments or accept Bashir's treatments. In fact, the only reason so few Elaysians ever left their homeworld was that everyone else was fine with 1g and no one gave a shit about their needs.
Geordi made it clear more than once that not only would he rather just be able to see, but that his VISOR caused him constant pain
it was also suggested that his visor was "superior to human eyes". star trek is habitually inconsistent about its world and sometimes it is better not to think about it too much.
"curing at birth" != "Eugenics"
Still, the spirit of accommodation is spot on.
They're not totally wrong either, just missing a step and leaving a gap.
Genetic engineering is strictly outlawed in the UFP which came about from the Eugenics wars.
I see names being mentioned and It’s problematic when someone assumes disabilities by armchair diagnosing characters with a disability and then defend it as if it were true.
“I assume normies would find this character annoying as they have some quirky, slight misunderstandings of personal boundaries so I’m going to attribute them with ‘being on the spectrum’”
That isn't happening though.
Geordi is blind, Julian was genetically engineered to remove a learning disability and Tilly is stated as having special needs while being aggressively autistically coded.
The only one that doesn't have something directly pointing towards it is Barclay but that man is the textbook definition of Aspergers Syndrome and people have been saying it for decades. It's not like his issues are minor either. They're a significant core component of the character.
Just FYI, "Asperger's Syndrome" is no longer used as a medical term and some ND people do not care for it being used at all because it divides people on the autism spectrum unnecessarily, especially since there's no real separation in terms of symptoms. Everything falls under "autism spectrum disorder" (ASD) now.
(I realize you didn't mean to offend, just letting you know.)
They could solve racism by ensuring everyone has the same colour at birth! /s
The only thing I can think of whenever I hear that is, hilariously, an episode of Fairly Odd Parents.
Timmy wished for everyone to be a grey blob so racism couldn't exist. People still kept saying they were grey-er or blobbier.
People just gonna hate.
Why the fuck is Julian mentioned here along with the actually differently abled characters? He was genetically enhanced as a youth because his parents thought he was a little slow.
Well... you just sort of answered why.
I just feel like, at best, he's more of an example of the other camp. He didn't have anything wrong with him, his parents just wanted him to be more.
In Bashir's own words:
"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. All I knew was that I was a great disappointment to my parents."
When he talks to his parents about it they talk about how they saw him "fallling farther behind each day" and that's why they did the treatments. They loved him and did want him to be more, but the cause was quite clearly a learning or mental disability of some variety. The treatments started at 7 years old and first grade would have been at 5 or 6. If you're not able to tell a tree from a house at 5 or 6 then there's something far more wrong than simply being slow.
Very few characters are ever seen wearing glasses.
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