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Assuming her threats and behavior would eventually result in her being tossed in jail, the choice seems to be between her imprisonment and her being forcibly me

Assuming her threats and behavior would eventually result in her being tossed in jail, the choice seems to be between her imprisonment and her being forcibly medicated. I don't have an answer for you. I think you've come up with a potential plot for a very interesting Star Trek episode though.

bell-cot 4y ago
Her family's guess is that she'll be killed in some violent altercation while "on the run". Probably one for which she bears most of the "responsibility". And they pray that she won't get any innocents maimed or killed before that happens. (Star Trek: My guess is that such an episode, if it had any serious depth, would be vetoed in the script stage - due to being an extremely painful subject for too many viewers.)
- mjevans 4y ago
  Star Trek and the like also have utopia levels of medical tech. Physical level problems are all solvable with their level of technology. In Scifi: Real bad people exist. Real people who need help exist. Real people who just need some time to talk out their problems with the ship's / a local counselor exist. Real people who can't be helped don't exist, they reductively condense into one of the three classes above because society and tech are advanced enough. (Except in cases of extreme breakdowns; E.G. Voyager wasn't the only ship mostly sucked to the delta quadrant.)
  - anotherman554 4y ago
    "Star Trek and the like also have utopia levels of medical tech. Physical level problems are all solvable with their level of technology." The poorly written second season of Star Trek Picard had a character who was suicidal and refused treatment, then killed herself. I think people refuse treatment in real life because the drugs don't work too well, not because they don't want to feel better, and at any rate you can't have a utopias if people choose to due horrible things to themselves or each other, you just have real life, so I think it went against the tradition of Star Trek being utopian fiction.
  - stonogo 4y ago
    Ethical dilemmas persist: Voyager's "Lon Suder" character had violent tendencies which he struggled to control. The Next Generation episode "The Outcast" replaced dangerous, violent tendencies with romantic love; the character in question was forced to undergo treatment and then afterward was grateful for them, which raises questions whether informed consent is even possible under those circumstances. Star Trek alone had countless plot lines surrounding incurable medical conditions. Worf broke his spine, Picard has some kind of syndrome which will cause cognitive decline, La Forge had to settle for a visor for most of the franchise, and so forth. Even under utopean circumstances, ethical considerations abound, as in "The Schizoid Man," an exploration of both rights for artificial life and transhumanism. Sisko's father ignored medical advice because he chose to, and in VOY's "Scientific Method" we find aliens desperate to develop lifesaving technology, even at the cost of agency for Federation staff.
Pxtl 4y ago
I've already read a science fiction story or two about this scenario - a dangerously schizophrenic guy goes off his meds and then murders someone during mania. He gets charged with criminal negligence because he knew how dangerous he would be without his meds. One of Niven's short stories, he loved to write about the ethics of schizophrenia.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  FWIW: Larry Niven, "The Ethics of Madness", first published in Worlds of IF's April'67 issue. (And available on archive.org, if you can't yet rationalize buying dead-tree copies of all of Niven's Known Space stories.)
  - phonon 4y ago
    https://archive.org/details/1967-04_IF/page/n81/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/1967-04_IF/page/n81/mode/2up

bell-cot 4y ago

Her family's guess is that she'll be killed in some violent altercation while "on the run". Probably one for which she bears most of the "responsibility". And they pray that she won't get any innocents maimed or killed before that happens. (Star Trek: My guess is that such an episode, if it had any serious depth, would be vetoed in the script stage - due to being an extremely painful subject for too many viewers.)

mjevans 4y ago
Star Trek and the like also have utopia levels of medical tech. Physical level problems are all solvable with their level of technology. In Scifi: Real bad people exist. Real people who need help exist. Real people who just need some time to talk out their problems with the ship's / a local counselor exist. Real people who can't be helped don't exist, they reductively condense into one of the three classes above because society and tech are advanced enough. (Except in cases of extreme breakdowns; E.G. Voyager wasn't the only ship mostly sucked to the delta quadrant.)
- anotherman554 4y ago
  "Star Trek and the like also have utopia levels of medical tech. Physical level problems are all solvable with their level of technology." The poorly written second season of Star Trek Picard had a character who was suicidal and refused treatment, then killed herself. I think people refuse treatment in real life because the drugs don't work too well, not because they don't want to feel better, and at any rate you can't have a utopias if people choose to due horrible things to themselves or each other, you just have real life, so I think it went against the tradition of Star Trek being utopian fiction.
- stonogo 4y ago
  Ethical dilemmas persist: Voyager's "Lon Suder" character had violent tendencies which he struggled to control. The Next Generation episode "The Outcast" replaced dangerous, violent tendencies with romantic love; the character in question was forced to undergo treatment and then afterward was grateful for them, which raises questions whether informed consent is even possible under those circumstances. Star Trek alone had countless plot lines surrounding incurable medical conditions. Worf broke his spine, Picard has some kind of syndrome which will cause cognitive decline, La Forge had to settle for a visor for most of the franchise, and so forth. Even under utopean circumstances, ethical considerations abound, as in "The Schizoid Man," an exploration of both rights for artificial life and transhumanism. Sisko's father ignored medical advice because he chose to, and in VOY's "Scientific Method" we find aliens desperate to develop lifesaving technology, even at the cost of agency for Federation staff.

Pxtl 4y ago

I've already read a science fiction story or two about this scenario - a dangerously schizophrenic guy goes off his meds and then murders someone during mania. He gets charged with criminal negligence because he knew how dangerous he would be without his meds. One of Niven's short stories, he loved to write about the ethics of schizophrenia.

bell-cot 4y ago
FWIW: Larry Niven, "The Ethics of Madness", first published in Worlds of IF's April'67 issue. (And available on archive.org, if you can't yet rationalize buying dead-tree copies of all of Niven's Known Space stories.)
- phonon 4y ago
  https://archive.org/details/1967-04_IF/page/n81/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/1967-04_IF/page/n81/mode/2up