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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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The danger of letting parents choose modifications they think will serve their children in life is exactly what Bashir expresses in DS9: it gives parents, and society more generally, the power to determine what's acceptably "normal" and flatten out anything that deviates. Geordi similarly expresses at least twice that he doesn't want normal vision, that his blindness is not a defect that needs fixing and what's utopian about the Federation he lives in is that his difference is accommodated and supported.
I've always really appreciated Star Trek's hardline stance on this, because its a moral problem that I feel we've lost a little bit of sight of and is going to emerge again in the next few decades in real life. I think you could make a case for the Ilyrian environmental adaptation being different, but to do that you would have to explicitly place it against the real arguments against gene editing and work through them, and this episode went in a different direction.
Huh those are both strange examples - was Bashir harmed in any way by his genetic augmentations other than having to face social prejudice for them? Seems like he's a success story, selflessly putting his enhanced gifts to work for the greater good. If only we had a 1000 more like him! The situation where society is deciding what's normal and banning deviations is the one where people like him are prevented from existing.
As for Geordi, you realize that he did in fact cure his blindness with his implants, which give him not just normal vision but better than normal vision? Another example of the benefits of allowing a different sort of voluntary body modification.
There just aren't any real arguments for banning this sort of voluntary gene editing, beyond perhaps a ban on giving children harmful traits.