An episode of Star Trek: Voyager

[BigT]

@Bryan_Ekers

I find it hard to take the alleged quandary seriously, too. If the victim of the person represented by the hologram is having a problem then after the medical crisis is averted, let them spend all the time they want “torturing” the hologram for revenge

And if we’re going to play the “but a sufficiently advanced hologram is just like a real person” card, let them make a holographic version of James T. Kirk, put it in command, and they’ll be home in a month.

He’s not the same person, but he is based on that person. He even has the same ethics in the episode, saying that patient opinions on trearment don’t matter, and almost tortures the other alien to death before the Doctor steps in and stops him and uses a more humane method.

Personally, I have a problem with Janeway forcing the issue on B’Elanna, since it would be like the government forcing me to have a treatment I morally object to. And I object to the Doctor deleting the research, but not the hologram.

I would instead suggest he just replace the research with more ethical tests and then delete it. Otherwise, just keep it locked away and only used in an emergency.

[Bryan_Ekers]

I’m finding it hard to be even slightly moved. Given the level of sophistication involved, it strains credibility that they can’t soften the presentation enough to let it be acceptable. It’s a fucking hologram - make it look and behave like Winnie the Pooh if it’ll help, assuming you even need the hologram in the first place.

Now, if there was a living breathing crew member who decades earlier had done ethically questionable but currently relevant research, then you’d have a quandary, especially if he wasn’t even slightly remorseful about his former occupation, though he was sincere in wanting to help B’ellana.

[Chronos]

How the heck did the simulated Cardassian have any more information than the Doctor? The Doctor already has access to all of the medical data on the ship. If he doesn’t know how to treat the patient, then a hologram that looks like someone else won’t know, either.

To which the answer, of course, is that the holodeck doesn’t work via computers and holography; it works via calling beings from the spirit world, and crossing your fingers and hoping that it’s one of the seelie fey that answers your call. Really, every plot point ever involving the holodeck makes much more sense when you interpret it through that lens.

[alphaboi867]

If the Doctor is just “photons & forcefields” one my also ask why he’d even need nurses or assistants to do basic tasks like hand him instruments instead of just remotely manipulating him (basically telekinesis).

[MrDibble]

@Chronos

To which the answer, of course, is that the holodeck doesn’t work via computers and holography; it works via calling beings from the spirit world, and crossing your fingers and hoping that it’s one of the seelie fey that answers your call. Really, every plot point ever involving the holodeck makes much more sense when you interpret it through that lens.

This is my new headcanon.

[MrDibble]

@alphaboi867

If the Doctor is just “photons & forcefields” one my also ask why he’d even need nurses or assistants to do basic tasks like hand him instruments instead of just remotely manipulating him (basically telekinesis).

Now I want to write short fic with an encounter with an alien ship, with a (completely benevolent) ship’s doctor who’s just a floating cloud of forceps, scalpels and syringes…

[Dale_Sams]

@friedo

B’ellana’s race has nothing to do with it. Her objection was due to her being a former Maquis rebel, who hated Cardassians because they had been at war with them since the events of Journey’s End in TNG.

Star Trek badly needs a character that says “What…oh get the fuck out of here with that shit. Doc start treatment, are you shitting me?? I just dealt with this Tuvix shit last week, and now this??? Am i on the USS Kumbaya??”

Said character is contantly in the brig cause he doesn’t play by Janeways rules of respecting viewpoints and cultures.

Problem is, whenever Trek even hints at someone like that, like Ro, they just browbeat her into nothing by making her wronnnnnnnnnggg or guilty or blah blah blah.

[Dale_Sams]

@Bryan_Ekers

I’m finding it hard to be even slightly moved. Given the level of sophistication involved, it strains credibility that they can’t soften the presentation enough to let it be acceptable. It’s a fucking hologram - make it look and behave like Winnie the Pooh if it’ll help, assuming you even need the hologram in the first place.

Now, if there was a living breathing crew member who decades earlier had done ethically questionable but currently relevant research, then you’d have a quandary, especially if he wasn’t even slightly remorseful about his former occupation, though he was sincere in wanting to help B’ellana.

See? SEEEEE??? Thats good!! Have it be a crew member who this entire time was another Cardassian in disguise who worked under Belanna and cared a great deal about her and didnt see any way to help her except blow his disguise and reveal this forbidden info he had to save her. HE wasn’t the Mengele like guy, but he knew the info still.

My scenario takes remorse out of it cause he just has the info.

[Fenris]

@Irishman

One point: the argument against keeping and using the data is that it provides incentive for future unethical testing, as “it’s the results that matter, not the methods”. “Once we have the data, it won’t matter how we got it.”

Hmm…damn you.

I’ve mentioned before that I am the son of a Holocaust survivor and had…until your fcking comment above, came to the conclusion that if any good could come out of the useless, slipshod, unscientific torture and butchery that those fucking sadists pretending to be doctors performed, it should be used so that the victims didn’t die entirely in vain. I’d honestly never considered the idea of incentive.

So…congrats (seriously, despite the faux-angry tone-- no hard feelings.) on making me rethink an idea I’ve been satisfied with for 15 to 20 years.

*To date, almost nothing has. IIRC, we learned a little more about how people freeze to death in icy water from the Nazis and not much else. :rolleyes: Not a huge contribution to the body of medical/scientific knowledge.

[terentii]

Did Janeway et al. ever consider setting the transporter to the invasive alien’s physiology and simply beaming it out of B’elanna’s body, leaving her own organism intact? :dubious:

[MrDibble]

@terentii

Did Janeway et al. ever consider

“…anything”.
That’s the real question.

[terentii]

@Chronos

How the heck did the simulated Cardassian have any more information than the Doctor? The Doctor already has access to all of the medical data on the ship. If he doesn’t know how to treat the patient, then a hologram that looks like someone else won’t know, either.

The information probably wasn’t included in the medical banks because it was unethical. In terms of past history, though, the Cardassian’s hologram would know it, just because he’s an asshole.

The same could be said about Nazi experimentation. If you want to learn about it, you look in history books, not medical texts.

[Riemann]

@Fenris

I’ve mentioned before that I am the son of a Holocaust survivor and had…until your fcking comment above, came to the conclusion that if any good could come out of the useless, slipshod, unscientific torture and butchery that those fucking sadists pretending to be doctors performed, it should be used so that the victims didn’t die entirely in vain. I’d honestly never considered the idea of incentive.

So…congrats (seriously, despite the faux-angry tone-- no hard feelings.) on making me rethink an idea I’ve been satisfied with for 15 to 20 years.

How would the Nazis benefit from current use of any of their data? If the Nazis are not benefitting, where is the incentive?

[Bryan_Ekers]

Of course, the real dilemma is that the invasive alien slug is really good at violin.

[Riemann]

@Bryan_Ekers

Of course, the real dilemma is that the invasive alien slug is really good at violin.

That’s why it must be eradicated. Violins beget violins.

[simster]

@Riemann

That’s why it must be eradicated. Violins beget violins.

viola! We have an answer!

[Irishman]

@Riemann

No, that’s a much simpler moral question, and not the one under consideration. It only provides an inappropriate incentive if the unethical researchers themselves benefit from use of the data. Here we’re talking about saving innocent people.

The issue is not limited to one set of researchers, but the incentives to future researchers. Are you willing to engage in unethical practices to gain results only obtainable that way, if the results would be used to save lives later?

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@terentii

Did Janeway et al. ever consider setting the transporter to the invasive alien’s physiology and simply beaming it out of B’elanna’s body, leaving her own organism intact? :dubious:

Yes; after the Doctor says that removing it surgically would do irreparable harm to her organs, he gets asked by the Captain whether they can just get a lock on the creature and fire up the transporter — and he of course helpfully explains that, no, the results would be catastrophic for her cardiopulmonary system.

[Riemann]

@Irishman

The issue is not limited to one set of researchers, but the incentives to future researchers. Are you willing to engage in unethical practices to gain results only obtainable that way, if the results would be used to save lives later?

What incentive? How are you suggesting any researchers, past or future, are benefitting?

[Horatius]

@Riemann

What incentive? How are you suggesting any researchers, past or future, are benefitting?

I think the issue is that it gives them a plausible sounding excuse for what they were going to do anyways, which might let them convince others to look the other way.