Star Trek and Genetic Engineering

[Stravo]

I recently watched an Enterprise episode - don't ask why, it was on and supposedly one of the "4th season is better" ones at that so I decided to watch. It dealt with Professor Soong and the Augments which I took to be the same folks that Kahn and his Supermen came from. I could be totally wrong about that but with such throw away lines as "I have five times your strength, Captain" I think its a safe bet.

In any event it got me thinking about the whole genetic engineering angle and how it has been portrayed on Trek through the Space Seed and Eugenic Wars back drop. There seems to be this inherent "evil" to genetic engineering. It is basically stated that these supermen all end up the same, megalomaniacal mad men. But is there any real truth to that?

In my mind genetic engineering would be more like what we see in Gattaca. People who are smarter, beautiful but also lack disease and other foibles of "normal" human genetics. And when you start practicing genetic engineering aren't you just improving on the original? Humanity as a whole becomes "better" doesn't it? For example, if I had the choice to make sure my son does not inherit my diabetes and heart disease prone genetic faults why the hell wouldn't I? I'm not talking about designing your kids so that they're all blue eyed blonde haired Aryans, I'm talking about simple genetic procedures that will ensure a better way of life for your kids.

However Trek posits creating "supermen" people with five times as strong and twice as smart. Even if this were possible what is the inherent "evil" in this? Putting aside economic arguments and class where you may have an underclass of "normals" that can't afford the procedure let's remember this is the Federation where everyone would presumably be given that option.

As exhibit A to this option I present Julian Bashir from DS9 who was augmented by his father and it was viewed as a crime so awful that Julian lived in fear and shame and his father ended up in jail. But why? Look at Julian. Is he a madman? Did he try to conquer the Alpha Quadrant? Why would the Federation withhold such augmentation from all its citizens to lift up the species as a whole?

What does this attitude say about the Federation in-universe and what does it say about Trek writers out of universe and this inherent fear of genetic engineering? Should we be afraid of it? Is it as normal a tool for human development as sanitation and immunization?

[neoolong]

It felt like they were going for a "humanity isn't ready for this" angle, which I think they did for a number of things in Enterprise.

Didn't Phlox and Archer talk about how the Denobulans have been using genetic engineering for quite a while and they didn't ever get close to destroying themselves because of it?

[Ryag Han]

problem in star trek with genetic engineering is that they screwed up...badly. their first attempts totally backfired, and after the augments almost conquered the world, they had a kind of natural build in fear it would happen again. at least that's my opinion.

they screwed up, and didn't want to make the same mistake again. it wasn't the augments themselves that were bad. take for example Star Wars cloning. if a clone was grown to fast, it would go mad because of the stress on its brain.

just as such, star trek has bad genetic engineering...or had, back in earth's first attempts, and because of inexperience and most probably mistakes in the engineering of the gene code itself, they got what they got. maybe they put DNA from more aggressive people, or made them more aggressive by mistake, you can't be sure.

people are afraid of difference. unknown. yes, genetic engineering has a lot of advantages, but just like today, fear always gets to people. fear of the past, fear of mistakes. Julian is proof they had the ability to correct the mistakes they did. but people are paranoid, and racist. that's all. they say "well if we didn't had the chance of entrenchment, why should anybody else?"

i think this is one of the few things trek writers got it real. that's very much what would happen in reality. in universe, it shows the Federation isn't the glorious utopia claimed to be.

we should not be afraid of genetic engineering. evolution has limits. it puts reproduction and survival of the species above such things as health. that's why you get old and die. but with genetic engineering you can prolong life far beyond natural limits. but you have to think of the implications.

it won't always be available to everyone. if we would start using it, there would be a dangerous transaction. rich people will have access to it, poor people will not, and will produce a deep social difference. that's a bad thing. people have started wars for less. if it isn't the enhanced people, the the normal people will act. that's also a bad thing. just cuz: people are dump. they fear gays, they fear jews, they fear chinese, they fear spiders...genetically enhanced people would be the new gays/jews.

maybe later, when its made cheaper...but before that...

[Stofsk]

Considering that humanity's first foray into eugenics/genetic engineering resulted in a large scale world war, complete with barbarism and tyranny and genocide, it's understandable in-universe for the Federation to be leery of any sort of extensive genetic modifications. Stuff to correct for medical ailments is different IIRC, its augmentation that causes concern.

Out of universe, Trek has a humanist philosophy as opposed to transhumanist. The future of humanity isn't optimistic because we have fantastic technology or because we've specifically weeded out undesireable genetic traits like say super aggressiveness, it's because humanity as a whole got its act together and started coming together in peace.

[Stofsk]

He hilariously got the dates wrong though with regards to the Eugenics wars. The admiral dude said two centuries when at that point it would have been closer to four.

[TOSDOC]

I haven't seen the relevant Enterprise episodes, but didn't Space Seed seem to imply that the geneticists creating Khan and his ilk were acting on their own or in collaboration with a few colleagues, possibly outside government supervision?

Star Trek TOS seems to revel in "Infinite Diversity through Infinite Combination" implying that all our bad traits that could otherwise be eradicated through genetic manipulation make us what we are as individuals as well as the good, and should be embraced instead of discarded. Ryag Han may be right on the money in his observation, but I think this was one of the things Gene Roddenberry was aiming the human race to understand and accept as it matures. Listening to Gene talk about it on such audio books as Inside Star Trek (part of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture CD Soundtrack) reinforces the idea that he embraced this concept and wanted to project it into the future. Advanced medicine may allow you to live longer, suffer less disease, and even help you diet and exercise more effectively, but don't change who you are in the first place coming out of the womb. He may also just have wanted an easy way to explain why there were so many balding, overweight, and aging people in Starfleet 200-300 years in the future.

Other Sci-Fi seems to get along quite well with genetic manipulation, however. The Honor Harrington series sees a lot of the characters adapted to different colony worlds due to genetic manipulation, and none of them are psychotic as a result of the science.

EDIT: typo

[Crazedwraith]

He hilariously got the dates wrong though with regards to the Eugenics wars. The admiral dude said two centuries when at that point it would have been closer to four.

He stuck 200 years ago based on a Khan line, about being a prince on Earth, 200 years ago. And forgot the time difference between DS9 and TOS...

Of course even with the Ban, It doesn't extend to things like Birth defects. Bashir mentions it in his episode and there was surprisingly decent episode of Voyager, where Torres tries to convince the Doctor to do more and more genetic alterations to her unborn baby to remove its klingon features so it wouldn't face the stigma of being a hybrid. (note its been ages since I saw that episode so it may not be actually good but the concept's not bad.)

Interestingly, this was a last minute decision. Alexander Siddig said he didn't know about his genetic modification storyline it until a couple days before they filmed that episode, and he was pretty annoyed about it.

They did the same thing with the 'Bashir is a changeling' plot just a few episodes before. Memory Alpha gives me the impression he wasn't that bothered the first time but when they kept doing it....

He also lobied hard to have the characters all know about the genetic modifications. In the original only the audience knew.

[Ryag Han]

on a quick note, id like to bring to attention the fact that just because you can cure a disease with genetic manipulation, dose not mean your out of the water. one change to the genome of a person might result in severe and unpredicted changes of a person. i guess its less dangerous to change 1 gene, but what if you change 2, 3 and so on? if you want to make someone stronger, more resistant to diseases, you got a lot of changing to do.

maybe that's why the augments like Khan were psychos; they changed so much physical, they'll brain was affected somehow, and resulted in increased aggressiveness. the human body is a delicate machine, and if you affect one part, another might have to suffer.

[Batman]

Other Sci-Fi seems to get along quite well with genetic manipulation, however. The Honor Harrington series sees a lot of the characters adapted to different colony worlds due to genetic manipulation, and none of them are psychotic as a result of the science.
EDIT: typo

I suggest you reread the series Genies are tolerated as a necessity of interstellar colonization, but that doesn't mean they're actually thrilled with the idea. There's a reason Honor herself (or the Winton family at that) keep a low profile about being genies. They're okay with corrective gene manipulation, but that's about it. Everything that amounts to actually improving humans is still severely frowned upon, for pretty much the same reason I suspect it is in Trek-because the supersoldiers from Old Earth's Final War were psychotic and did suffer from a massive superiority complex pretty much like Khan and co, and their descendants (the Scrags) are still anything but well-adjusted individuals.

The Honorverse is paranoid about gengineering too, they're just nowhere as paranoid.

And sorry, with something like the Eugenics Wars in my past, I'd be paranoid too.

[Purple]

It's kind of ironic thou that in all its enlightenment human kind can not man up and forget the failings of the past. I know it's realistic but that's the point or rather the problem. Supposedly, trek is meant to represent an idealized humanity. A humanity that has outgrown superstition, greed and evil. And yet when you get down to it they are human after all.

[Ryag Han]

It's kind of ironic thou that in all its enlightenment human kind can not man up and forget the failings of the past. I know it's realistic but that's the point or rather the problem. Supposedly, trek is meant to represent an idealized humanity. A humanity that has outgrown superstition, greed and evil. And yet when you get down to it they are human after all.

of course. human nature can't change. you can suppress it, hide it, try to be better and many people can go beside it. but those people are a small percent.

you can't "idealized" humanity; you can live in the illusion that you can, but at its core, self awareness has its downfalls.
that's why i don't really like humanity in star trek, their a bunch of deluded fools. i like what they did with the Terrans thou, their way human.

[Batman]

Err-what, exactly, is the difference between 'humanity' and 'terrans'? Unless you think human colonists on other planets are somehow different?
And you absolutely can idealize humanity, that's what TNG does. What you can't do is make it abide by that ideal.
And whether or not you can change human nature, you can change human behaviour. That's why most countries on this planet no longer stone people for being the wrong religion and the ideas of 'yeah, maybe prisoners have rights afterall' or that maybe women actually can think and maybe should be allowed to vote came to pass.

[Ryag Han]

Err-what, exactly, is the difference between 'humanity' and 'terrans'? Unless you think human colonists on other planets are somehow different?
And you absolutely can idealize humanity, that's what TNG does. What you can't do is make it abide by that ideal.
And whether or not you can change human nature, you can change human behaviour. That's why most countries on this planet no longer stone people for being the wrong religion and the ideas of 'yeah, maybe prisoners have rights afterall' or that maybe women actually can think and maybe should be allowed to vote came to pass.

hello, terrans? TERRAN EMPIRE? ring a bell?

[Batman]

You do know that 'Terra' means 'Earth' and thus 'Terrans' merely means 'people from Earth', right?

[Ryag Han]

You do know that 'Terra' means 'Earth' and thus 'Terrans' merely means 'people from Earth', right?

and you do know that this is a trek topic, and in trek 'terrans' means 'the guys from the mirror universe'?

[Batman]

You do know that 'Terra' means 'Earth' and thus 'Terrans' merely means 'people from Earth', right?

and you do know that this is a trek topic, and in trek 'terrans' means 'the guys from the mirror universe'?

As that has never been established anywhere that I know of no, I don't. But feel free to educate me.

[Ryag Han]

You do know that 'Terra' means 'Earth' and thus 'Terrans' merely means 'people from Earth', right?

and you do know that this is a trek topic, and in trek 'terrans' means 'the guys from the mirror universe'?

As that has never been established anywhere that I know of no, I don't. But feel free to educate me.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Terrans#Mirror_universe

[Batman]

Vee. That comes as a surprise. This is relevant to you blithely assuming terran automatically meaning you're talking about the mirror universe guys-how, exactly?

[Purple]

Vee. That comes as a surprise. This is relevant to you blithely assuming terran automatically meaning you're talking about the mirror universe guys-how, exactly?

He is right here and you are wrong. For the same reasons why the word Rebel used in a SW context automatically should be assumed to mean a refer to of the rebel alliance and not just any kid with a streak for disobeying authority.

The term Terran is in the ST universe newer used for anything other than the mirror universe Terran empire. No one refers to anything else by that name. Ergo when used in a ST context there is only one thing that the word can refer to.

[Ryag Han]

Vee. That comes as a surprise. This is relevant to you blithely assuming terran automatically meaning you're talking about the mirror universe guys-how, exactly?

cuz every single forum i went about this, people knew what i freaking mean cuz they watch the dam show, that's how lol.

[Batman]

Maybe I am. Should the term terran indeed never have been used other than to refer to the Mirror Universe guys, I'll have to conceed I guess.

[Batman]

Vee. That comes as a surprise. This is relevant to you blithely assuming terran automatically meaning you're talking about the mirror universe guys-how, exactly?

cuz every single forum i went about this, people knew what i freaking mean cuz they watch the dam show, that's how lol.

Their loss.

[Setzer]

The Federation seems to think there's some sort of cosmic plan, that there's a way genes and evolution are "supposed" to go, and it's hubris to alter or tamper with this.

[Batman]

One wonders how they know the tampering isn't part of the plan.

[Setzer]

If you're required to make the tiniest bit of effort, it's not part of the plan.