I was thinking about this while we’ve been doing the Khan memes.
La’an is a descendent of Khan, meaning she has genetically augmented DNA.
If Una had a kid and didn’t augment that kid’s DNA further, could that kid legally be in Starfleet?
Is there a “as long as your own personal DNA wasn’t augmented, you can be in Starfleet?” Because that doesn’t make much sense to me.
Una had augments added after birth. La’na only is decedent of Khan. She herself has no added augments (beyond what she was born with genetically). That’s my guess?
Edit: I guess that’s kind of what you said in the post description I didn’t read close enough
Right, but if Una had a kid, would it be legal for the kid to be in Starfleet? What if the kid was with another augment?
Would any of Una’s augments pass down?
Her DNA has been altered, right? They would have to.
Depends if they altered her eggs too. It’s a different story with dudes, who produce gametes for all their lives, as opposed to women, who are born with all the gametes they will have.
Wouldn’t they have augmented her in vitro rather than wait until any natural development took place?
The augmentations by Illyrians happen in-utero.
Did they say that? I guess I missed that in the show.
Not necessarily - real gene therapies that are in use now are carefully designed so that modifications are not inherited. For example, Casgevy which targets blood stem cells to treat sickle cell anemia. Because the treatment is limited to specific types of cells modifications don’t get into the germ line.
Khan was from the 1990s. La’an was born in, what, the 2230s?
Assuming the augmentation dilutes with generations of intermixing with normal humans, I’d presume that by the time La’an comes around that she has so little difference from baseline human DNA that Starfleet doesn’t care.
It’s a judgment call, and I suppose that you can’t put an exact line on when the augmentation is diluted enough, but in the eyes of Starfleet she is clearly past it. The spirit of the anti-augmentation laws are prevent new augments, which is supposed to prevent a case of some kind of augment takeover. La’an having a distant family line to augments doesn’t seem to pose any kind of risk like that.
Una was straight up an augment. Her DNA was directly tinkered with before birth. That’s exactly was Starfleet, or more precisely humanity is fearful of.
I don’t think we can really look for some kind of codified judicial procedure for a situation like this. The anti-augment laws exist out of fear, and that balances against the more enlightened nature of humanity in the future. Simply, people in charge are afraid of what is Una in a way they aren’t of La’an.
One simply does not fuck with La’an Noonien Singh.
