Welcome to Gaia! ::

This actually popped into my head after skimming one of the threads in the New ED's Chatterbox, so kudos to Koravin and Simon for the inspiration. Also, it came from watching The Twilight Zone a few too many times, especially "The Eye of the Beholder"/"A Personal Cave of Darkness" (the title listed at the end of the episode. Yes, I'm a nerd.) Oh, and from reading Legends of Dune. Essentially, I'm a nerd.

I'll break this up into two sections: Untreatable diseases and "undesirables".

So, the first part-patient X has untreatable disease Y. (For the sake of argument, we're going to assume that there is little to no chance of a cure/treatment being found in this patient's lifetime. I'll provide two reasons for this assumption, but again: only for the purposes of this debate. The reasons are that Y is a relatively new disease. Doctors don't know the first thing about it, especially not how to treat it. Reason two is that Y is like a super germ, and mutates to deal with any medication or other treatment it is attacked with.) Now, after reviewing everything, patient X is left with four possible end scenarios (this is all hypothetical, remember.) they are as follows.

1 Live for what time they have left.
2 Suicide.
3 Euthanization.
4 Sent to a "community" where other infectees live so that they don't risk infecting anyone else and can die in peace.

Which scenario do you think is best, and why?

Section two: "Undesirables"

For purpose of ease I'm not going to specify exactly what makes them undesirable, suffice to say that society at large finds them to be undesirable. For all I care, you may think that they are stupid, smart, ugly, beautiful, mentally handicapped, physically crippled, too "perfect", religious, atheistic, fat, skinny, tall, short, gay, straight, or even just wearing the wrong shirt. I don't care, and it really makes no difference, so long as we agree that quality X makes you undesirable. I'm going to propose five possible ways of dealing with these undesirables (note that this remains all hypothetical) (also, this sort of implies a facist society where everyone needs to be either flawless or identical).

1 We try to "fix" them, removing the quality that makes them undesirable. (As suggested by the Twilight Zone episode). This would be theoretically be done before options 2 and 3.

2 We segregate them into a "ghetto"/"community" where they can live and breed amongst themselves, thus isolating this quality. Any children born without this quality would be removed from the ghetto and integrated into the general population. Theoretically, they'd have all the comforts of a non-segregated area, they'd just have no interactions with "desirables".

3 Euthanization.

4a Allowed to live among the general populace. They are treated as normal, functioning members of society, with equal rights.

4b Allowed to live among the general populace, but are victims of moderate discrimination (fewer rights, some social segregation).

4c Allowed to live among the general populace, but witha rigid caste system. Those that are deemed the most "undesirable" are the lowest, and get higher progressively based on the number of "undesirable" qualities on has. The highest would be the most "pure", and would be like the ruling class. Definite use of eugenics-you can't mate with someone outside your caste.

5 Ignored. Left to live in squalor and find their own way to survive. Generally treated like s**t, they are either sterilized or in some other way prevented from breeding so as to "cleanse the gene pool". (This is the solution taken by the Sorceresses of Rossak in Legends of Dune, if you care.)

Again, which do you think is the best, and why?

I'm going to try to remain neutral for as long as I can in this discussion, although I may try to play Devil's Advocate.

Hrm. For untreatable diseases, I would probably say that the choice is really up to patient Y. However, having such a disease could frighten the general populace, and that patient could be outcast if choice 1 were taken, unless, perhaps the disease was not physically noticeable at least on the outside. (I actually know what this feels like, having the genetic skin disorder Lamellar icthyosis. This disease is a disease where my skin cells build up faster than they can flake away, so I scale up. Reactions range from thing like total acceptance, to horrified reactions (such as to day, a woman almost fainted upon seeing me stressed )

Suicide is a definite option, and, once again, this choice is definitely up to the patient. This could be by their own choice, being horrified at the thought that they could be contagious, or it could be choice made by the community, who are horrified at the thought of the disease and possible contagiousness.

I find that euthanasia fit into the suicide category, so that is my answer on that.

Being sent to a community seems a little odd. I might choose this option for maybe a week, because I would find it better to not be reminded of my disease. Sure it may be nice for awhile joining a group of "your own kind" but it would begin to get boring and possible bring one to mania after a while.

So generally I find option one and three c/would lead to option 2, as might 4. It all depends on your personal preference. And possibly that of the people in your area.

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For the undesirables, I would just like some clarification. How would one be fixed?

1. Fixing them may be undesirable to the undesirable, and would not always work. Of course if we were in such a fascist environment, this may not be affordable (not because of the fascism, but because the incredible amount of people that would be flawed). Because of the cost of finding and fixing such undesirables, this may cause the rest of the community/country to live in squalor anyway, with the barest of necessities (unless of course the undesirables had almost literally nothing).

2. I read a book slightly similar to this, "Storm Thief" by Chris Wooding. Once again, would the cost of such a community be too much strain on any economy whatsoever? And, also, what is a pure "desirable"? What is the point of perfection? Would the ghetto areas be segregated within themselves?

3 And once again, with pragmatism (in my opinion anyway). Is this cost effective? Especially since almost all life under this fascist banner would be wiped out. So no, I doun't think this would work at all... Unless you created a Holocaust scenario... (I'm sorry if that offends anyone).

4a The fours and five are really the only ones I think would work in a real-life situation... If they were given equal rights, and nobody cared all too much about what/who they were, then that would work, as they would be given no "special" treatment or anything.

4b This I think would work as well, but it would be harder to pull off, sort of... I don't know really. You'd have to make sure it didn't escalate too much into full blown violence, of you could have something like a civil war on your hands....

4c This would be even more difficult to pull off. It's almost sort of the "The Last Book in the Universe" by Philbrik Rodrick (or something I'm pretty sure that isn't the right name at all). This could cause dissent. It is possible to have sort of a dangerous love cycle thing, where the higher castes are intrigued by their lowered brethren. Or would their be some sort of injection for newborns: that they are rendered sterile with any other than their own sub-species...?

5 This could be the easiest, just saying "screw them, let them fend for themselves." Of course, it could be even more interesting if truck made rounds weekly to euthanize undesirables. In this case, if a minimal amount of undesirables were euthanized weekly or monthly, it might be much eaier to regain money from the costs of this act. Of course sterilization would be rather difficult, because people would hide their children and themselves from such a fate...

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Those are my opinions.

All of those techniques would theoretically work, but the ones I think would work better, are semi-obviously noted in this post.