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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:Is it okay if the modifications are done in the womb, but not after birth? Does the Federation just abort all Down syndrome fetuses? Probably easier than that. Ship's/station's/city's computer sees you're pregnant right before your period's due, signs you up for a doctor's appointment that you curiously forget making but don't worry about because this isn't the archaic pre-WW3 past where people had to pay money out of pocket for checkups, doctor sees you're pregnant, advanced medical scanners sees the kid's going to be incredibly busted, medical scanners administer a mild abortifacient and erase their logs, the red river flows next day and oh well honey I guess we'll try again.
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Jan 17, 2018 05:17
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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:Okay forget "profoundly retarded"; let's say a child with mild to moderate Down's syndrome is born into the Federation. People with Down syndrome can live lives of value, be happy, and make many contributions to the world. Genetic resequencing technologies known to the Federation can probably cure it, though of course with a "cure" of this type you get into philosophical questions about the continuity of the self and so on. But my question is, would the Federation outlaw this? I don't think there's a correct moral position here; I certainly wouldn't condemn a parent who decided to have genetic work down on their child with Down syndrome, though I would also understand those who choose not to. But I'm not sure it falls under what is meant by "serious birth defect" here. In the case of Down syndrome, it's an easily identifiable chromosome "error." You either have your full Chromosome 21 or too much of it. So for the benefit of simplicity we can say that this is an error to be corrected.
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Jan 17, 2018 05:25
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Down's Syndrome seems to fall under the heading of "serious birth defect" even if you can live a reasonably full life with it. I think Trek was in part being clumsy but I also think that it's weird how all the old eugenics arguments come out the moment it's being done through targeted retro-viruses or whatever instead of through cattle-like breeding. Perhaps people do not need to maximize their performance value metrics in order to be worthy of living.
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Jan 17, 2018 06:20
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When DS9 was written life expectancy for Down's Syndrome was still in the 20s I think.
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Jan 17, 2018 06:25
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Arglebargle III posted:When DS9 was written life expectancy for Down's Syndrome was still in the 20s I think. Best I can find is 49 years in 1997. ...which isn't what I expected but it makes sense that I can't think of elderly people with downs syndrome
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Jan 17, 2018 06:37
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Okay, I've decided the best rogue holosuite episode is Bashir's and Garak's James Bond Adventure
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Jan 17, 2018 06:41
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3 DONG HORSE posted:Okay, I've decided the best rogue holosuite episode is Bashir's and Garak's James Bond Adventure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnWAcaCMIUg
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Jan 17, 2018 07:50
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3 DONG HORSE posted:Okay, I've decided the best rogue holosuite episode is Bashir's and Garak's James Bond Adventure This is correct, because the entire cast got to Unleash the Ham!
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Jan 17, 2018 08:31
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One thing I don't get about the Federation ban on genetic manipulation is how that TNG episode where Pulaski starts ageing rapidly because she came into contact with genetically augmented humans fits in.
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Jan 17, 2018 13:14
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Oh, the dude who made them was sentenced to hyperdeath. Like, they went to alternate dimensions to keep executing him.
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Jan 17, 2018 13:19
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Oh, the dude who made them was sentenced to hyperdeath. Like, they went to alternate dimensions to keep executing him. Weirdly enough, his mirror-universe counterpart was a hologram.
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Jan 17, 2018 13:44
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Birth defects, that quaint old term, fall under the header of "disability". Add to that the idea that disabled people aren't defined by their disability and the answer is clear: monitoring for birth defects in the womb and eventually solving those defects through genetic manipulation. Which brings the very prescient question of what is considered a "defect" for that purpose and likely a very interesting topic for us as a species when we hit that point. Not saying there's a right answer here, just stating that the endgame is obvious. I'll end it with the following: My friend has Graves Disease and my sister has MS. Both debilitating conditions, especially as the Graves went undiagnosed for so long. My sister had luckily been diagnosed early and got in on some nice chemical trials for maintaining the condition. But if i had the chance to make both of their conditions go away, I'd do it in a heartbeat. SpeakSlow fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Jan 17, 2018 |
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Jan 17, 2018 15:13
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8one6 posted:This is correct, because the entire cast got to Unleash the Ham! Aside from Sisko, who lives it. Everyone knows to be afraid of Sisko when he's yelling. Only the wise know to be even more afraid of Sisko when his voice is soft and quiet.
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Jan 17, 2018 15:27
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Somewhat related to the genetic engineering discussion, I always wanted to see a Star Trek story deal with a Federation species that reproduces hundreds of offspring per "couple". In the wild, only, like, 2 or 3 offspring would survive, but in a post-scarcity society they have the technology to save all of them. How would the Federation deal with a species that reproduces exponentially?
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Jan 17, 2018 18:09
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Interesting. I wonder if an r-selected species could survive reaching civilisation.
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Jan 17, 2018 18:14
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Bucswabe posted:Somewhat related to the genetic engineering discussion, I always wanted to see a Star Trek story deal with a Federation species that reproduces hundreds of offspring per "couple". In the wild, only, like, 2 or 3 offspring would survive, but in a post-scarcity society they have the technology to save all of them. How would the Federation deal with a species that reproduces exponentially? Probably similar in implications, if not the reason for it, to Larry Niven's Moties if they were able to escape their home system.
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Jan 17, 2018 18:21
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There was a species like that in a Janeway story in that Captain's Table short story collection. They had poo poo tons of babies and couldn't use contraception or abstinence or they die.
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Jan 17, 2018 18:25
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MikeJF posted:Interesting. I wonder if an r-selected species could survive reaching civilisation. Niven's classic A Mote in God's Eye looks at a species (the moties!) that has to reproduce in massive numbers or they'll die, and it always ends with some sort of malthusian catastrophe or nuclear cataclysm from which they have to completely restart society before they ever achieve interstellar flight Upon discovering this species, the humans in the setting decide to just blockade the system to let them keep repeating the cycle rather than let them out-colonize and eventually be forced into a war for territory with the humans. I may be mixing it up with another book, but I think there was also some talk about trying to develop a cure while they kept the moties contained on their hellworld- Edit: Actually turns out there's a sequel set 25 years later where they introduce the genetic alteration to the motie species, so it all worked out in the end Of course, this solution comes out of a government that styles itself as an empire, so I imagine the federation would find a more humane approach to the problem- although, depending on how you interpret the Prime Directive, maybe not! Bohemian Nights fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Jan 17, 2018 |
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Jan 17, 2018 18:27
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remusclaw posted:Chernobyl Flawed reactor design melted down due to staggeringly stupid decisions, to include ignoring established guidelines. remusclaw posted:Three Mile Island Stuck valve causes loss of coolant, poor training and crappy interface design cause release of radioactive gas, resulting in public exposure to an amount of radiation about 1/6th of a chest x-ray. remusclaw posted:Fukushima When you build a nuclear reactor run by a negligent company in an area well known for seismic activity it will leak radiation when hit by a tsunami. And that's why we shouldn't build nuclear power plants in Nebraska. 60 years of nuclear power and most people can only name these three events. But fossil fuels are safer somehow?
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Jan 17, 2018 18:34
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McNally posted:Flawed reactor design melted down due to staggeringly stupid decisions, to include ignoring established guidelines.
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Jan 17, 2018 18:55
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Cingulate posted:Notably, these three events together resulted in a fraction of the deaths that result from fossils any given month.
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Jan 17, 2018 18:56
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I was thinking about that one originally, but left open the option of a pessimistic count for Chernobyl.
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Jan 17, 2018 19:00
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Humans don't like nuclear power because we are unable to properly assess risk. Also, we dumb.
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Jan 17, 2018 19:29
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Trek is full of such insane OSHA violations too, speaking of risks. Just like maddening pointlessly unsafe designs and practises that fly in the face of the federation being some advanced utopia that values life. Chinese factory workers probably work in safer conditions that a typical starfleet crew.
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Jan 17, 2018 19:33
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I just realized what's been bugging me about the Discovery Klingons, and Saru. Their hand prosthetics are too big, so they can't actually curl their fingers, and you get the 'oversized Halloween prop glove from Wal-Mart' effect; they can fold their fingers at the knuckle, but can't bend any of the actual finger joints. In the closeup of !Saru's hands when he's holding the brush, it looks like they just didn't put half the prosthetics on to his hands, so he could actually grip and manipulate the thing.
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Jan 17, 2018 19:48
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TheCenturion posted:I just realized what's been bugging me about the Discovery Klingons, and Saru. Their hand prosthetics are too big, so they can't actually curl their fingers, and you get the 'oversized Halloween prop glove from Wal-Mart' effect; they can fold their fingers at the knuckle, but can't bend any of the actual finger joints. 
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Jan 17, 2018 19:49
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Cingulate posted:Notably, these three events together resulted in a fraction of the deaths that result from fossils any given year. Are people just walking around whipping trilobites at each other?
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Jan 17, 2018 20:02
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Sash! posted:Are people just walking around whipping trilobites at each other?  This is the real danger after all.
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Jan 17, 2018 20:12
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The same year Fukushima happened 11 people died in an explosion in an oil rig, and it was a minor news item. That's a single incident. All Fukushima-related deaths are due to moving hospital inpatients, most of them elderly. Hundreds of people die each year in Chinese coal mines, and it's rarely ever in the Chinese news much less western news. More than 4,000 people in the US have died in fossil fuel extraction accidents in the last 50 years.
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Jan 17, 2018 20:13
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Arglebargle III posted:The same year Fukushima happened 11 people died in an explosion in an oil rig, and it was a minor news item. That's a single incident. All Fukushima-related deaths are due to moving hospital inpatients, most of them elderly.
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Jan 17, 2018 20:22
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We do have a power generation thread guys 
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Jan 17, 2018 20:25
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It's relevant because even the Ferengi are horrified that we nuked ourselves and our own planet
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Jan 17, 2018 20:32
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Baronjutter posted:We do have a power generation thread guys  (it's Geordie looking inside a Romulan Warbird's quantum singularity power generator)
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Jan 17, 2018 20:32
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I love how they didn't have the set budget for a big cool romulan engineering section and some impressive looking technology to contain and harness a singularity. Instead it's just a little medicine cabinet on a random wall with a black hole inside you can directly peep at.
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Jan 17, 2018 20:39
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Cingulate posted:
Uh, we know.
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Jan 17, 2018 20:40
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Baronjutter posted:I love how they didn't have the set budget for a big cool romulan engineering section and some impressive looking technology to contain and harness a singularity. Instead it's just a little medicine cabinet on a random wall with a black hole inside you can directly peep at. Its for you to dump your razor blades into.
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Jan 17, 2018 21:28
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SpeakSlow posted:Birth defects, that quaint old term, fall under the header of "disability". Add to that the idea that disabled people aren't defined by their disability and the answer is clear: monitoring for birth defects in the womb and eventually solving those defects through genetic manipulation. The Fed objection seems to be to all the stuff that people immediately veer into about creating hyper-intelligent super scientist babies or guaranteeing your child has blonde hair and blue eyes, so on and so forth. The big nuance with the Bashir story is, how much was curing genuine problems he had (which, perhaps, the Federation should have, as a society, done more about, and sooner) and how much was curing the flaw of "not being good enough for his parents' satisfaction"?
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Jan 17, 2018 21:50
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Well, that's the thing. Bashir is not just normal intlligence. He's a genius, with an eidetic memory, and superhuman coordination and reflexes. It's not just normal Bashir. It's gymnast Einstein Bashir.
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Jan 17, 2018 22:19
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Epicurius posted:Well, that's the thing. Bashir is not just normal intlligence. He's a genius, with an eidetic memory, and superhuman coordination and reflexes. It's not just normal Bashir. It's gymnast Einstein Bashir. This should be the norm for all humans if we're going to compete on the galactic stage!
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Jan 17, 2018 22:21
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quote:I was 6. 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 a computer, I was still having trouble trying to tell a dog from a cat, and a tree from a house. I didn't really understand what was happening. I knew I wasn't doing as well as my classmates. There were so many concepts they took for granted, that I couldn't begin to master. But I didn't know how or why. All I knew was that I was a great disappointment to my parents. Bashir was definitely disabled with something that should have been allowed to be treated with genetic engineering.
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Jan 17, 2018 22:36
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