Disability in Star Trek

I mean, in response to the last one, the Federation does allow (and sometimes advocates) for the correction of birth defects.

Julian: DNA resequencing for any reason other than repairing serious birth defects is illegal. Any genetically enhanced human being is barred from serving in Starfleet or practising medicine.

Deep Space Nine, "Doctor Bashir, I presume"

Doctor: Yes. It's a girl. And aside from the deviated spine, she's healthy.

Paris: Will she need surgery?

Doctor: Fortunately, we've advanced beyond that. Genetic modification is the treatment of choice.

Voyager, "Lineage"

So I imagine plenty of disabilities do end up being erased, it's just that being disabled is also socially accepted to a much greater extent than today.

To add here, not everyone is born with disability but sometimes shit just happens
- Yeah, I think for Geordy his eyes just got consistently worse until he was blind without a visor. On Ba'ku his eyes recovered briefly.
“DNA resequencing”

If someone in Star Trek is born with a bum knee, they just laser surgery the knee. Deformed backbone, replicate a new backbone. A lot of defects and disabilities can be solved by 24th-century medicine without involving genetics.

McCoy gave that old lady a pill and she regrew her kidney using her own aged body inside of an hour. Apparently, fixes of that type are an over the counter prescription and don’t run afoul of the eugenics laws either.

Approved genetic modifications is more for things like conjoined births or fetal organ failure. Too many toes? Here’s some special shoes, carry on.
Since when is DNA holy scripture? I'd be optimizing that every day.
- In Star Trek? Around the aftermath of the Eugenics wars

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.
- I don't think that's contradictory at all though.
  
  Geordi wanted to be able to see [naturally], but his visor is superior to human eyes in that it can see things that humans can't naturally see.
  
  To put it a different way: a person with advanced bionic legs that never tire, could run far faster than any natural human, and bend in ways that human legs can't, would have superior legs. But there wouldn't be anything wrong with their stance if they said "yeah but I just want normal human legs".

This is a stupid take as well. There is also evidence that the federation does practice the correction of birth defects and disabilities when appropriate.

And why would they not? Allowing such impairments to exist when the medical technology to prevent it is available seems insanely unethical to me. Like breeding pugs because if people stopped doing that the breed would cease to exist, ignoring the fact that being a pug is a miserable existence for the animal.

I believe the most sensible policy for the federation (and us in real life) would be to correct any and all birth defects, disabilities and impairments wherever possible, while accommodating and fostering compassion and acceptance for the cases where it is not possible.

Disabled people are not lesser than anyone else and should have the same capacity to participate in society, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try everything to prevent people from being disabled.

Allowing such impairments to exist when the medical technology to prevent it is available seems insanely unethical to me.

There's a not insignificant minority of the deaf population who believes that there should be no "cure" to deafness researched or put into practice because they believe it will destroy their community to have children receive this cure at birth. They literally want to deny children the ability to hear, even though we might be able to cure deafness with genetic engineering or other tech
- I am aware of that sentiment and consequently find it selfish and ethically objectionable. While I understand that a special bond is formed this way, that happens anyway between halfway decent parents and their offspring because they love each other.
  
  That is not a good enough reason to deny your child one of its senses.
- There was an episode of scrubs about that
Plus in Geordie's case, his visor gives him better than normal sight. He can look at parts of the electromagnetic spectrum other than the visible wavelengths, so restoring his natural sight would have been giving him a handicap rather than removing one.

Also the whole "that disability is a part of who they are" sounds a lot like reducing people to their disabilities. Like it's one thing if there's nothing that can be done or if the best we can do isn't enough to cause it to no longer be a disability, then they should be accepted disability and all. But it's another thing if the disability could be corrected or made redundant (like Geordie's visor giving him better than normal vision).

I don't think the timing will work out for me, but if cybernetics get going during my lifetime, I'd consider getting augmentations. A coprocessor and memory expansions would be great, though I'd probably need tin foil hats or a magneto helmet to protect from solar flares and EMPs.

It's crazy to me that some people think improving people's capabilities, disabled or not, is unethical. No one bats an eye if someone gets a broken arm set properly to avoid it becoming a disability.
This is the breath of fresh air this dumb post made me need. Thank you.
It's a matter of quality of life. If someone without conventional hearing can have the same quality of life through other means, then there is no need to "fix" them, unless that's what they want.

Obviously debilitating illnesses and pain are still dealt with, but stuff like missing limbs or other traits that we might call handicaps are not the same impediment in the future as they are to us, because there are so many possible paths for every individual to choose, and many of those might even be better suited to someone with a unique physiology.

"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.

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.

You could make the same argument about down syndrome, autism, being transgender, darker skin tone. Eugenics is not a good thing, it seems appealing at first but it's a slippery slope and gets ugly very fast. Also they have the technology to accommodate these kinds of disabilities, so why bother with all that when he could get ocular implants and live a relatively normal life.
- You’re absolutely right about the examples you mentioned. I still would rather not live, or have lived, than being blind or being born without an arm or something not whole or complete. So I would definitely prevent certain things from being experienced by my children if I had the option.
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.
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.
- In the episodes of TNG that look at their near future, Geordi has his eyes fixed, or at least has realistic implants that allow him to see normally. Why would he do it if there's no point? Is he stupid?
- 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.
- A major Geordi character arc revolves around his eyesight. Yes, his prosthesis affords him additional abilities and allows him full function, but that says nothing of the otherness he has felt and psychological impact of being different throughout his whole childhood, and the challenges he faced for acceptance, even within StarFleet.
  
  To dismiss his personal struggles while assuming that he's fulfilled and would OPT to not have regular eyes is incredibly arrogant and ablest, no? It is also deeply lacking in awareness and consideration of psychology, which is pretty bang-on for Boomers of the era that STTNG came out. "Oh, well looking at the END RESULT, he turned out fine, despite his massive trauma."
  
  The likelihood is that he did not turn out fine, we just don't see the granular details of his psyche, on screen.

Here is my take, assuming:

We have the ability to remove all birth anomalies
It is safe and effective, i.e. not an experimental technique
It is not controversial, i.e. curing sickle cell is just the done thing\
Scanning tech is much better than today

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.

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.
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?
- And it’s cruel, because then they never get the opportunity to develop speech when they’re young with audible feedback.

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."

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.
Meanwhile Shatner was stealing half a dozen of Kirk's toupées every season...

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.

Idk sounds a bit fucked up to not erase some birth defects and disabilities if you have the means to do so. Don't have to bring eugenics into it if you can just give the mother a pill that will make it so that the kid won't have a fucked up leg or something. Hell, if eugenics is the worry, could let that baby be born with a fucked up leg and fix it later.

Yeah at some point in future space tech it becomes a trolley problem where not curing genetic disabilities is as much of a non choice as pulling the lever.

The thing is, Star Trek was a show set in the far future trying to teach us morals about the present. And unfortunately for us, we don't have space communism so if the choice is between accommodating for birth defects and an ineffective, corruption-prone, dubiously safe eugenics program the choice is a lot easier. They have to communicate the morals of that on the show and it creates a hole in logic.

There's also a head cannon that the "eugenics wars" that they reference in the show has actually warped the morals of the society they're in for the worse as any discussion of pre-natal intervention is illogically taboo.
- That's not head-canon. It's literally a plot point in DS9.
  
  It's discovered that Julian was intellectually disabled as a child and his parents had him illegally genetically modified. He almost loses his commission and his father ends up being imprisoned over it.
As someone with disabilities due to multiple genetic problems, If there was a way, when my mom was pregnant, to alter those genes, so I wouldn't have the BS, and they didn't, I would cut them out of my life.
- That was basically everyone's parents but Bashir's.

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

I never saw LaForge as a "disabled person" at all. In my view he had superpowers. What puzzled me was why other characters didn't wear similar visors. I mean why would blindness be a prerequisite for getting the ability to see in infrared, ultraviolet, etc? Seems like everybody would want that. Especially if it could be ocular implants like he eventually had.

Someone with functioning eyesight wearing the VISOR would just get a mishmash of nonsensical information. Their real senses clash with what the VISOR is sending them. Coincedentally it's also the exact same reason for another side effect. Pain. Despite Geordi not being able to see, his eyes still sort of fought the VISOR and caused him constant pain. It also had the ability to be hacked which isn't a great option.
- Easy technobabble fix - the visor suppresses the optical neurons, or it simply acts as a blindfold so the real eyes see only darkness. LaForge's pain was because the tech wasn't fully developed. I forget if he still had the pain with the prosthetic eyes. Hackability is another problem we probably won't have in the real future because of quantum encryption or whatever, but it's still a good plot device present-day people can relate to - no matter how unrealistically it's portrayed - click-click-click... "okay, I'm in!" LOL.
Didn't they address that in an episode? Or the movie with Cochrine?

The whole OP thread gives me pain. Like watching midgets slapfight.

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.
  
  https://www.healthline.com/health/autism/why-is-the-term-aspergers-no-longer-used#the-removal-of-aspergers
  
  (I realize you didn't mean to offend, just letting you know.)

Why is Barclay disabled. Unless being a perv is a disability.

Holodeck addiction is a disability I guess
Lt. Barclay has an anxiety disorder which greatly interferes with his ability to live his life as he wants to.
Also what disabilities do Julian and Tilly have?
- Tilly is obviously ginger
He appears to be on the spectrum

Very few characters are ever seen wearing glasses.

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.
- Granted on the premise that leaving the house should be rewarded.

STRICTLY PROHIBITED (unless you're a good boy doctor)

His parents paid the price.
- The iron price, or gold (pressed latinum)?

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.
- Honestly that show was and is so far ahead it needs a cameo ship in trek. It would be like other federation ships, with nacelles that look like wings and a little crown floating nearby.
Or they could just bang each other. In fact I'm kind of alarmed at how decidedly unmixed people still are in whatever year it is supposed to be

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.

being being

Sometimes, I really hate the English language.
- Oh damn, I haven't even noticed xD.
  That whole sentence is unintentionally grammatically hilarious.
- I, too, hate that that had had me confused as well but they're there in a grammatically correct fashion

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.

Accessibility features on phones and computers have made so much possible over time, it’s fantastic.

It turns out thinking outside the box of common leads to great experiences.

KHAAAAAAN

Uh...ok.

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?" 🙄

Edit: in case it's confusing, I meant the idea that disabilities shouldn't exist in fantasy because of magic is annoying.

There's always the way to rationize that a medical problem can't be fixed because of individual traits - for example, in the Wrath of Khan, Kirk needs reading glasses because he's allergic to the drug they normally use to treat vision problems.
- Yeah, whenever people can't think of things like this it's so unimaginative. Like, heaven forbid the magic be not that simple or something.
Maybe because healing spells don't work that way? Or maybe that type of spell requires some very rare and/or expensive ingredients. Like, it's magic. You can make up whatever rules for it that you want.
- In case it's confusing, that's the opinion I have as well.