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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Thank you! Came on here because the episode left such a bad taste in my mouth. I'm a queer person with multiple disabilties, one of which is known to be genetic. Using genetic engineering as the metaphor for marginalized groups felt like a trojan horse to garner public sympathy for genetic engineering.
And through making genetic engineering acceptable then we're opening up the world to letting parents engineer the gay out of their children and to engineer the neurodivergence out of their children.
Instead of being a story about accepting marginalized groups to me it feels like they're actively pushing for a technology that can be used to wipe out marginalized groups. Why did the writers do this? They literally did not have to set this up or write it this way.
Also the references to the Eugenics Wars as though they are somehow irrelevant today just did not at all sit well with me as somebody who is high risk for covid. This whole pandemic the drumbeat has been "only those with pre-existing conditions will die" and we have been fighting for our lives to get the most minimal public health measures and the ableds just keep putting their conviences over our lives. Eugenics is still here, it's still going strong, but we're just not calling it eugenics anymore.
I think it's really hard to philosophically (which I think is needed as a base to write a law coherently, though I may be the only one) draw a line between medicine and "eugenics" at least as Sci-Fi explores the concepts. And I have real difficulty seeing why it's not just a naturalistic fallacy to say evolution is good but genetic engineering for adaptation or reducing disease or even enhancing abilities is bad.
I see all sorts of problems with government forcing some sort of improvements or discrimination a la Gattaca. I have more trouble saying parents can't make an informed choice however - the alternative seems similar to the Texas shooting where the police prevented parents from trying to save their kids. If there's a treatment or prevention from a disease that causes horrible deaths at young ages - it feels a lot like swinging in the other direction way to far to say - well, we don't want to "wipe out" the minority that dies horribly at 5 from this genetic disease that we otherwise could cure.
I suppose the other point of contention I'd have is I don't have a belief system that says anyone is meant to be in some cosmic sense. So I don't feel a sense of community around being fat let's say. If I had a magic wand to genetically ensure my potential kids could never get fat - I'd think I was doing them a favor, kind of like the teeth sealing that came out too late to prevent cavities for me. I think it's horrible to treat currently fat people poorly, but to let parents decide to stop that from happening to currently not existing people? I struggle to see who we're harming.
Historically, Star Trek has been rather on the side of no cosmic plan, though the newer shows are muddier on that. I don't know if the episode was claiming that the main reason the Federation was against genetic engineering was because it was seen as an "afront against God", but they did call that out in one line. But even if the show was making a religious argument, that's very weak to those of a different or no religion, and the new shows also make it clear the Federation is good with lots of different faiths and atheists too.