GURPS Star Trek - Canon Vulcans

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Arguably, a more realistic treatment would be to have McCoy not be entirely certain what is normal for Spock - not because he is Vulcan, but specifically because he is a human-Vulcan hybrid, and there haven't been enough of those for proper baselines to be established.

That makes the most sense.

It might also explain McCoy constantly needling Spock - he's trying to get a "psychological baseline" on just how Spock's Human/Vulcan hybrid brain works. McCoy might have no more problems with full-blooded Vulcans than most humans, but Spock sort of freaks him out.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Interfertility implies a good degree of commonality, yeah. They may also have adaptive medicines of some sort - maybe those airhypos they use so often have a variety of drugs (or drug precursors that can be instantly synthesized), and they interface with the medical scanning equipment to determine give the proper dosage of the proper drug(s).

This is a fantastic idea, although never specifically mentioned in canon.

Assume that the medical tricorder has all pertinent physiological data on various crew, and that it can almost instantly gather vital statistics like weight, blood pressure, species, sex, approximate age, blood type, genotype, phenotype, epigenetics, etc. on patients whose medical history is unknown. The SAI in the tricorder can then make routine dosing and treatment calculations based on its diagnostic software.

The hypospray isn't just filled with one drug, but a compound of chemical precursors which the hypospray can synthesize into a whole multitude of drugs as necessary to treat a given patient, using data sent to it by the medical tricorder or other medical diagnostic equipment. It then dispenses exactly the right amount and combination of drugs necessary to treat a given medical condition. No risk of drug interactions, overdose due to getting the patient's weight wrong, or unwanted side effects because the doctor missed an underlying condition. "Wonder drugs" like Inaprovaline, which seem to be able to cure everything from acne to the Levodian Flu, could actually be suitable precursor compounds.

Originally Posted by Varyon

For not bothering with CPR or similar, maybe they've got immediate treatments that can do anything traditional first aid can - and do it better - and when they announce someone is dead, it's because the tricorder indicates there is no method available to revive them (for someone who's heart has merely stopped, they hit them with a "revive" hypo and they're back on their feet in no time).

That makes sense for people zapped by phasers or strange alien attacks, but there are cases where crew get taken down by low tech weapons. In some cases, it's obvious that fast action could save the patient even using early 21st c. medicine, but the doctor does nothing other than give a death diagnosis.

Admittedly, that's more of a TOS thing, and mostly a way of streamlining the plot (why waste 2 minutes of a 46-52 minute show on a meaningless side plot where the ship's doctor saves/doesn't save Ensign Bitplayer?), but it still gripes me.

(It could also reflect 1960s era medical knowledge. The whole idea of modern trauma medicine evolved in the late 1960s, partially due to the experience gained during the Vietnam war, and the modern notions of "the Golden Hour" and the "Platinum Minute" for immediate treatment of massive trauma date to the 1980s and the Iraq War era, respectively.)

Later on the TNG era shows got a bit better about "medical realism." Ensign Bitplayer takes a rock to the head and goes down. Dr. Bridgecrew waves a medical tricorder over them, proclaims a grave diagnosis, and orders an emergency transport to sickbay. This allows the writers to demonstrate that "Stuff Just Got Real" without depleting Starfleet's life insurance funds.