Transporter biofilters

[Ted C]

It's long been obvious that the biofilters in Federation transporters work a lot like antivirus software for computers: they have to know that some microbe is a threat before they will remove it during transport.

What isn't explained is why, once they know the threat exists, they don't apply the appropriate biofilter modification and then send the patient through a site-to-site transport to remove the pathogen. More than once we've seen someone beamed up with some kind of disease or parasite, and all they can do is try to find some medical treatment for the condition.

Is this just blatant stupidity, or is there some plausible explanation?

[Borgholio]

If you assume that the biofilter (once programmed to recognize a pathogen) can remove it from the body with 100% accuracy...I am honestly hard-pressed to find an excuse as to why conventional medicine is used when you can simply beam out the virus or bacteria. Only thing I can think of would be immunity, since fighting off a viral infection tends to leave you with a natural resistance against it in the future.

[Ted C]

If you assume that the biofilter (once programmed to recognize a pathogen) can remove it from the body with 100% accuracy...I am honestly hard-pressed to find an excuse as to why conventional medicine is used when you can simply beam out the virus or bacteria. Only thing I can think of would be immunity, since fighting off a viral infection tends to leave you with a natural resistance against it in the future.

If the infection isn't likely to kill the patient, that makes sense, but you get cases like the parasites from "Shades of Gray" and "Brothers" that aren't going to generate were both lethal and not the sort of things that will leave you immune in the future if you survive.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Federation has a lot of technology that they don't use to its full potential. Phasers come to mind (we know they can be fired using wide beam stun mode but they almost never are). Ditto holograms (there was one instance where Voyager created holographic illusions during a battle, but I don't see this anywhere else outside of maybe Star Trek Online). And then there's the whole not putting dying people in stasis until you can treat them issue which I think SFDebris brought up at least once. Not to mention they way they hold back on arming their ships. For some reason, the Federation seems to like to do everything with one hand tied behind its back.

[Baffalo]

Maybe, juuuust maybe, the Federation is so fucking awesome, they can do it and STILL kick everyone else's asses?

Ok now that you're able to breathe after laughing so hard...

The Federation has proven itself, time and again, to be rather... stupid. And I honestly think that it stems from the government of the Federation, which inspires such monumental acts of stupidity by basically running as a communist's wet dream. There's no real... ambition in Starfleet in the 24th Century. Literally everyone can get what they need to survive, and most seem to spend their time as bureaucrats and just doing enough to get by. You have some with genuine ambition, but look at, say, Keiko O'Brian, or Jake Sisko. Keiko was able to easily leave her job to stay at home, and Jake spent his time writing stories for the Federation News. Both are doing work they love, and in the case of Keiko she actually went on several trips to catalog new plants. Yet there's not really a, shall we say, passion.

Without this passion, and everyone sort of meandering along, you get what we saw in the Soviet Union, where people did their jobs and that was it. You did what you were told and, if you were lucky, found something you liked to do. I saw a clip from a news crew sent into the Soviet Union and a mechanic was working on fixing a pipe... only he was faking it. They had this lovely close-up of him just turning it with his hand and pretending it was the wrench. He just did not give a damn. And that's a problem when you have that many people doing that many things... with no real passion. Sure they like the jobs, they like sitting there doing work, but there's not a huge incentive to do anything special. There's no bonus at the end of the day for the guy who does twice the work, other than he might get a promotion. But what's a promotion mean, anyway? Do you get better accommodations? Better rations? Maybe an extra few transporter rations a month?

The point is, and this is something I've argued, is that without a clear motivator, the people of the Federation are simply, truly, honestly... content. They're content with their lives, their situation, and they don't see a reason for change.

[Eternal_Freedom]

What's that old joke? "As long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we'll pretend to work?"

[Simon_Jester]

On the other hand, it seems counterintuitive that this attitude would pervade Starfleet on its very flagships. Most of the characters we actually see seem motivated, competent, and reasonably professional, after all.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Bullshit handwave: The diseases that they need to find a treatment for are, somehow, able to bypass the transporter's sensors. The transporter has to have at least some capacity for allowing errors to get through, otherwise you'd leave behind healthy tissue. Perhaps these diseases look like normal parts of the person as far as the transporter is concerned. It's often pointed out that it seems like there are more things that interfere with the proper function of transporters and sensors than there are those that don't, so why can't some pathogen interact in a manner one wouldn't expect?

[Lord Revan]

there's also the matter that we know that transporters cause some amount of stress to the user and cannot bring back the dead so it could be that just beam away the disease cause it could end being that cure was worse then the disease and the patient died at the table due to transport stress.

[Ted C]

My best guess is that modifying a biofilter to recognize and remove a new pathogen takes long enough that it will never get done in time to save the patient, so a medical solution is needed.

That seems kind of ridiculous, given how many computer operations you can set up with just a few voice commands, but I can't think of anything better.

[Ted C]

there's also the matter that we know that transporters cause some amount of stress to the user and cannot bring back the dead so it could be that just beam away the disease cause it could end being that cure was worse then the disease and the patient died at the table due to transport stress.

There is some stress involved in transport, but it's never been a problem for anyone who wasn't in a critically unstable condition.

[SpottedKitty]

The point is, and this is something I've argued, is that without a clear motivator, the people of the Federation are simply, truly, honestly... content. They're content with their lives, their situation, and they don't see a reason for change.

Sounds plausible. It also sounds like one of the roads a post-scarcity society might end up on. Whether the Federation is heading towards something like the Culture, or something like Diaspar, is something we'll have to wait a while to discover.

[Adam Reynolds]

As an explanation for the ineffectiveness of Federation officers to genuinely be creative, I rather like the idea that Mike Wong suggested once:

Personally, I've been leaning toward a unified theory of Starfleet personnel behaviour: at some point in the last century, coincident with the movement toward a communist economy, the Federation quietly used some kind of retroviral genetic engineering to make its citizens into more co-operative members of society, thus explaining why communism seems to work for the Federation even though it doesn't work for normal human beings. This had the unforeseen side-effect of reducing their creativity and individualistic tendencies, but further research into the matter was halted for fears of causing more damage to the human genome. Extremely harsh rules against genetic engineering were adopted, in part because they did not want anyone to discover what they had done.

Yeah, I know, it sounds like the kind of plot you'd see in Firefly or Babylon 5 rather than Star Trek. That's half the problem with Star Trek right there.

While this would obviously never be canon, it is an interesting concept.

It is interesting that if one combines this idea with the other problematic cultures of the Star Trek universe, one actually sees regression among all of the major powers in the setting. Klingons ignore science and technology in favor of the warrior spirit. Romulans plot and scheme and never actually do anything. Ferengi exist as a pure strawman of capitalism that would ultimately become a group of competing warlords. The Cardassians aren't quite as obvious, though lack the development to really be criticized properly. Ditto for the Dominion. And the Borg are obvious enough.

It would be interesting if in the future everyone is actually weaker than in Kirk's time.

[Darmalus]

Do bio-filters actually remove diseases, or do they just tell the transporter operators that someone has something nasty, are you sure you want to beam them up?

If they do actually clean people out, it may require a custom procedure for each species/disease combo and not be as easy as adding a "delete ebola" command.

*wild hand-waving*

[Baffalo]

I remember Unnatural Selection (TNG S2E07) in which there was a disease that was completely immune to transporters because it was caused by the children's immunity, yet was ultimately cured in those affected by the transporter. All of this caused because someone on the USS Lantree was affected with Thelusian Flu, a clearly known about disease that itself wasn't affected by the biofilters.

So I think I'm seeing a pattern here, one that might explain a few things. Viruses are no doubt much harder to contain simply due to the sheer number of them, plus the fact they're often coated in a protein shell that could make detecting each tiny one next to impossible. The enhanced children from the Darwin Genetic Research Station were the cause because of their advanced immune systems, which meant even if the biofilters caught it, they would simply produce more after beaming. Thus, it's safe to rule those two out. As far as detecting the disease and then filtering it for Dr. Polaski, I'll buy it, but only if you stop and consider this fun little fact:

Babies are born without the bacteria in their gut to let them properly digest food, and require a few days to obtain some from the air or surrounding environment. If they beamed Dr. Polaski and filtered out everything but her, that would include those bacteria. So in essence, Dr. Polaski is going to have a few very rough days as her system suddenly realizes it lacks the bacteria to properly digest her food. That might be why the transporter isn't used very often, because if you yank everything without the host DNA, you're going to be removing those gut bacteria and other vital bacteria, leaving the patient in pretty miserable conditions.

As an explanation for the ineffectiveness of Federation officers to genuinely be creative, I rather like the idea that Mike Wong suggested once:

Personally, I've been leaning toward a unified theory of Starfleet personnel behaviour: at some point in the last century, coincident with the movement toward a communist economy, the Federation quietly used some kind of retroviral genetic engineering to make its citizens into more co-operative members of society, thus explaining why communism seems to work for the Federation even though it doesn't work for normal human beings. This had the unforeseen side-effect of reducing their creativity and individualistic tendencies, but further research into the matter was halted for fears of causing more damage to the human genome. Extremely harsh rules against genetic engineering were adopted, in part because they did not want anyone to discover what they had done.

Yeah, I know, it sounds like the kind of plot you'd see in Firefly or Babylon 5 rather than Star Trek. That's half the problem with Star Trek right there.

While this would obviously never be canon, it is an interesting concept.

It is interesting that if one combines this idea with the other problematic cultures of the Star Trek universe, one actually sees regression among all of the major powers in the setting. Klingons ignore science and technology in favor of the warrior spirit. Romulans plot and scheme and never actually do anything. Ferengi exist as a pure strawman of capitalism that would ultimately become a group of competing warlords. The Cardassians aren't quite as obvious, though lack the development to really be criticized properly. Ditto for the Dominion. And the Borg are obvious enough.

It would be interesting if in the future everyone is actually weaker than in Kirk's time.

Well, considering we know that humans prefer social relationships over individualism, coupled with our already somewhat herd-like mentality (not an insult just saying that we often go with the group or peer pressure), it could be that the genetic tinkering just reinforced what naturally occurs within the human brain. If this tinkering were made into an airborne virus, it would certainly explain why, after a century of contact, even a visiting dignitary to, say, the Romulans or Klingons would carry it. Since Humans can breed with both species (or most in the galaxy), the genetic tinkering would have spread, with unintended consequences, mostly reinforcing their own notions such as being a warrior for Klingons or being stealthy in Romulans.

[Joun_Lord]

Maybe to fit with the Communist theme they don't use transporters in place of medicine to keep jobs. Whats the point of training to become a Doctor if you can just transport someone and fix their failing liver, missing spine, deadly virus problem, and turn them back into fresh faced 20 year olds?

Innovation is frowned upon to not risk upsetting the system. Sure they could build the most effective warships, create near impenetrable body armor, and plenty of other things but like Baffalo said there is not incentive to do so but also probably pressure to NOT do so.

People are content in the Federation. People working for a living might create conflict, people making new ideas and creating new solutions would create conflict, and people actively looking for new ideas might create problems what with the prevalence of horribly deadly malfunctions Fed tech has and the sheer amount of weapons, some quite powerful, relatively mundane tech can create.

Which is another argument for lack of making the fullest of their tech, so as to not have a mini-apocalypse of the week. People not pushing tech to its boundaries means they are less likely to create super-weapons or destroy planets because they transported cheese or something. Think of all the devices of the week the Enterprise creates and are forgotten, devices the Federation and the arguably best crew in Starfleet control? Now imagine if Joe Average citizen of the Federation Union created such devices and did so without Big Bro Starfleet watching over his shoulder? Now imagine if he had the drive to market, innovate, and sell such things? Others would compete against him, trying to create their own devices.

Oh fuck, Alpha Gygax Prime just exploded because Joe reversed the quantum polarity of the inverse tachyon field or was overrun by holographic Nazi's led by Charlie Chaplin riding Godzilla or a transporter army of Joes ate everything.

I'd assume other government do similar measures for similar reasons.

[Baffalo]

Given how the Klingons are portrayed, I wonder if they're locked into the same mindset that pushed the original Vikings? By that I mean a push to expand due to overpopulation. For a culture of warriors, you'd think the idea of a straw death would be so horrible that they'd fight each other constantly just to prevent it. Yet we see politicians and others who are fine letting the brash warriors run off and fight... and I'm wondering if perhaps we're looking at two distinct systems in play, with one pushing the other due to resource issues.

I'm reading the Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson, and the big bads in the book are called the Grik, who have two major classes: The Uul, and the Hij. The Uul are mindless warriors, whose population often explodes out of control and are guided by the Hij to do things even if it's suicidal, like leap into the water with dangerous predators so that maybe one of them might secure a rope before he's eaten alive. The Hij are rarer but exploit this mindlessness to push their own agendas, letting the Uul spend themselves and even eat each other, just so they can keep them under control. While I'm not saying that the Klingons are going to start eating each other, I do wonder if maybe Klingon politicians encourage this idea of mindless devotion to honor in order to have them fight among themselves and limit the population?

Reason I mention this is because I'm wondering if the Klingons don't innovate because they're all about war now, or if it's a deliberate attempt by their government to hold them in check?

[Borgholio]

holographic Nazi's led by Charlie Chaplin riding Godzilla

This MUST happen!

[Simon_Jester]

Maybe to fit with the Communist theme they don't use transporters in place of medicine to keep jobs. Whats the point of training to become a Doctor if you can just transport someone and fix their failing liver, missing spine, deadly virus problem, and turn them back into fresh faced 20 year olds?

There really isn't much supporting evidence for the Federation deliberately not using advanced technology so that people will have something to do.

I mean, the entire replicator system displaces huge economic sectors that under a communist government are considered very valuable and noble and dignified... but the Federation uses it heavily.

Innovation is frowned upon to not risk upsetting the system. Sure they could build the most effective warships, create near impenetrable body armor, and plenty of other things but like Baffalo said there is not incentive to do so but also probably pressure to NOT do so.

Have we ever actually seen this pressure in the shows, or are you making it up in an attempt to explain why the 'technology of the week' seldom enters widespread service.

[Joun_Lord]

Maybe to fit with the Communist theme they don't use transporters in place of medicine to keep jobs. Whats the point of training to become a Doctor if you can just transport someone and fix their failing liver, missing spine, deadly virus problem, and turn them back into fresh faced 20 year olds?

There really isn't much supporting evidence for the Federation deliberately not using advanced technology so that people will have something to do.

I mean, the entire replicator system displaces huge economic sectors that under a communist government are considered very valuable and noble and dignified... but the Federation uses it heavily.

The replicator means the Federation is "post-scarcity". They and the citizens don't have to worry about resources, working 9 to 5 to make that paper, or ever worry about starving. The replicator is both the ultimate tool to placate the masses and the tool to prevent innovation and conflict. Why work and build improved space iPadds when you can sit on your ass and eat replicated Cheetos and play Call of Duty Super Future Ops 27 on the holodeck? Some people will work just to be productive, like people who join Starfleet and Sisko's dad who may or may not have a been a Starfleet admiral, but the great mass of the Feddie populace may not.

Innovation is frowned upon to not risk upsetting the system. Sure they could build the most effective warships, create near impenetrable body armor, and plenty of other things but like Baffalo said there is not incentive to do so but also probably pressure to NOT do so.

Have we ever actually seen this pressure in the shows, or are you making it up in an attempt to explain why the 'technology of the week' seldom enters widespread service.[/quote]

Mostly me just pulling a theory out of my bloated behind though there is some evidence to back that thing up.

Of course the fact that tech of the week never shows up again. It would be like the US inventing the atom bomb or jet engine (I know they didn't invent it but I'm warping the validity of history to make my analogy work) and then just shelving it and forgetting it was invented. Things like new weapons, new engines, new shields, and new life are just forgotten by Starfleet regularly. So either Starfleet is suppressing those things or maybe the Enterprise's computers just really really suck and keep crashing when Wesley downloads Nausicaan porn deleting all the info before it can be transmitted. Plus in the high tech future nobody makes any notes except on computers so recreating the super stuff is impossible.

Then there is other things like relatively mundane tech that we never see explored to its fullest, like transporter tech and holo tech. Today any tech is pushest to it extremes by everyone from the government to corporations to some dude in his garage. We see how to fully exploit that tech, make it better, make it cheaper, make it bigger or smaller, combine it with other tech, and even see if we can put it in a watch.

In Trek new tech just exists and barring some accident or something it never seems to be played with and improved. We only know about transporters capability of cloning, de-aging, and removing foreign particles thanks to fuck-ups, same how we know the holodeck can create life.

Now some times inventions are the result of fuck-ups but not to the Federation. Take Moriarty, a sentient person created by literally speaking a couple words. What do they do with him? Stick him in the memory until he is forgotten and then stick him on a flash drive to be forgotten again.

I'm almost surprised there was any interest in replicating Data, I'm surprised they didn't stick him in a hover-broom closet at Starfleet HQ and forget about him.

Now out of universe we know the reasons for this, different writers don't know what wundertech other writers created, a massive series spanning decades things will be forgotten, and its hard to have drama and action if the Federation is building Picard class Star Destroyers with shields that can survive taking a trip in a star and a crew that literally can't die and thats not even counting the holo and roid crew.

[Crazedwraith]

Now some times inventions are the result of fuck-ups but not to the Federation. Take Moriarty, a sentient person created by literally speaking a couple words. What do they do with him? Stick him in the memory until he is forgotten and then stick him on a flash drive to be forgotten again.

Bad example, sapient holograms did become a thing in DS9 and VGR. Witness the EMH and Vic Fontaine for example. And the hirogen/hologram two parter.

[Baffalo]

Just out of curiosity but why do Ferengi still adhere to using Latinum in their own post-scarcity society? They're clearly comfortable with replicators, yet they track commodities across the known galaxy and use strips of Latinum for currency. Is it just a cultural thing or is it because they still see value in currency?

[Borgholio]

Latinum cannot be replicated for some reason, so it still has value as a material like Gold or Silver would be in today's economies.

[Joun_Lord]

Now some times inventions are the result of fuck-ups but not to the Federation. Take Moriarty, a sentient person created by literally speaking a couple words. What do they do with him? Stick him in the memory until he is forgotten and then stick him on a flash drive to be forgotten again.

Bad example, sapient holograms did become a thing in DS9 and VGR. Witness the EMH and Vic Fontaine for example. And the hirogen/hologram two parter.

The Doctor was a fuck-up from being left on so long. The Hirogen hunted holograms were the result of a fuck-up brought on by tampering.

I think only Vic was self-aware as the result of creator intent.

[Ted C]

Latinum cannot be replicated for some reason, so it still has value as a material like Gold or Silver would be in today's economies.

Gold and silver are elements, so they can't be replicated, either. Latinum is apparently just harder to find than gold (which is still used for some transations, anyway).