Battleangel

Via The BioEthics Web Log …
Oh, this is a good one!

Diana Schaub, a Loyola College professor and adviser to President Bush, is convinced that cloning and embryonic stem cell research are evil. She says this belief was formed, in part, by watching Star Trek.

The show has “left me receptive to the view that mortality is, if not precisely a good thing, then at least the necessary foundation of other very good things,” she wrote in an article last year. “There is something misguided about the attempt to overcome mortality.”

Her interest in mortality and Star Trek could be regarded as the quirks of an academic if not for her position on the President’s Council on Bioethics, a 18-member panel that advises Bush on some of the most polarizing subjects in society.

Schaub, a registered Republican who is chairwoman of Loyola’s political science department, doesn’t see her views as conservative or liberal. Her views on morality are notable even on a Jesuit campus known for its students’ conservative views.

“Cloning is an evil,” she wrote in an article published in 2003. “It is slavery, plus abortion.”

Source: Baltimore Sun

She couldn’t have been paying much attention to Star Trek then … here is an example from the text:

.. especially one in which the crew answers an ancient distress call and finds a planet whose only residents are children, the result of a botched scientific attempt to prolong life.

Instead of aging naturally, the children live hundreds of years before reaching puberty. When they become teenagers, they suddenly perish. The crew reverses the effects of the experiment, enabling the children to age and die naturally.

Not having seen The Original Series (can you imagine? I have seen everything else though) I had to consult StarTrek.com which pointed to Season 1 - Episode 8 (”Miri“). The synopsis is pretty much as Schaub relays it, but she fails to clarify that what is killing the children is in fact a virus. I.e. something contagious which endangers the crew. The virus prolongs the life of most prepubescent humanoids until they pass into puberty when it kills them. Quite a tradeoff. But anyway. Since the crew is infected there is no choice but to find a cure, and in doing so obviously the children are “set right” too.
Also if one is to take the speculative road, as Schaub is, then it is likely that the experiment was botched in the first place. That even if he wanted to, McCoy can’t solve the problem that the previous inhabitants of the planet failed at. Prolonging life in such a fashion may not be viable scientifically. The tradeoff may be something normal and very natural.

Also, there is the prime directive? Which may or may not apply. Setting things “right” may be acceptably as it returns them to their presumed evolutionary path. Then again, this is a work of fiction stitched together by literally thousands of people. Sometimes the rules bend, sometimes they don’t.

Then there is the issue of the Eugenics wars which tends to pop up in Star Trek now and again. The made-up, but original, reason why genetic enhancements are not present in the human side of the universe. At least that is the reason that is always given.
Bottom line - Star Trek has its doctrines too. Some may be changing. The human integrity paradox is one doctrine among many. Even in face of biological or technological augments (like the Borg) no one ever questions the logic of remaining human in a universe that is advancing by leaps and bounds. This has been kept largely intact but it is one of the original philosophies and as such it dates back to the 60s. One can surmise that is it probably due to special effects limitations, i.e. why everyone in TOS looked essentially human. Sometimes the reasoning isn’t so high and mighty.
Star Trek has always dealt with contemporary issues but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to take a new grip on things once in a while. And even if one somehow comes to the conclusion that this is the unquestionable message that Star Trek sends, is it not possible that it is antiquated?

Besides, even in Star Trek there are exceptions to the rules, if the end is justifiable. Again bending the rules because it’s a work of fiction. Like the entire neo-con agenda that has been unfolding in the US over the last decades. Ironic.