It's never made much sense that the entire multi-species Federation would be subject to a strict ban on genetic engineering due to events on Earth that happened centuries before the Federation was even founded. The way they doubled down on that rationale in Una's trial only highlighted the absurdity -- especially when Admiral April claimed he would exclude Una to prevent genocide.
On the one hand, the writers may be trying to create a straw man out of a weird part of Star Trek lore so they can have a civil rights issue in Starfleet. And that's fine. From an in-universe perspective, though, I think we can discern another reason for the ban on genetic engineering -- the Klingon Augment Virus.
There was a ban on genetic engineering on United Earth, which is understandable given that it was much closer to the time of the Eugenics Wars. Why would that remain unchanged when more time passed, more species joined, and more humans lived in places without living reminders of the war? [NOTE: I have updated the paragraph up to this point to reflect @Value Subtracted's correction in comments.] The answer is presumably that they needed to reassure the Klingons that something like the Augment Virus would never happen again. Hence they instituted a blanket ban around that time -- perhaps in 2155, the year after the Klingon Augment Virus crisis and also, according to Michael Burnham, the year the Geneva Protocols on Biological Weapons were updated.
That bought the Federation over a century of peace, but after war broke out due to a paranoid faction of Klingons who thought humans would dilute Klingon purity and after peace was only secured through the most improbable means, they doubled down on the ban. Una's revelation provided a perfect opportunity to signal to the Klingons that they were serious about the ban -- hence why they would add the charges of sedition, perhaps. Ultimately, an infinitely long speech and the prospect of losing one of their best captains combined to make them find a loophole -- but not to invalidate the ban or call it into question. This Klingon context is why April, who we know is caught up in war planning of various kinds, is so passionate that the ban exists "to prevent genocide" -- he's not thinking of people like Una, he's thinking of the near-genocide they suffered at the hands of the Klingons.
This theory still doesn't paint the Federation in a positive light, since they have effectively invented a false propaganda story to defend a policy that has led to demonstrable harm. But it makes a little more sense, at least to me. What do you think?
I don't know that I fully agree. I think a lot of people who get upset about attempts to cure autism are people who are able to function in society independently, along with people who get upset on behalf of people with autism and/or are self diagnosed because they do things that fit the profile.
Contrast this with some people I know who have a now-adult child who is, to be clear, very intelligent, but he's nonverbal, will probably never drive, will probably have great difficulty holding down a job, all things that make life in current society difficult. Add the message of last night's SNW's episode in. Not everyone is an angelic, understanding soul. These folks I'm thinking of have had a lot of problems with prejudice. Add in that they're probably on board with having their child at home for life and having to worry about who takes over for them when they're not able to.
As far as I know I'm not on the spectrum even though honestly I should probably be checked. I do know about other, diagnosed problems that get in the way of what people would call "normal", and honestly if someone said I could get an mRNA injection to change that, I would. If they'd come to me 20 years ago and said, we can't cure you but we can make sure this ends with your generation, absolutely, no question.
I personally honestly think the line should be disease and disorders, full stop. Gattaca, in other words. I know we won't be able to stop rich people from ordering pretty and athletic kids eventually but the line should be drawn nonetheless.
On the other hand, historically, attempts at a cure have also resulted in rather terrible treatment for disabled people, particularly where eugenics tended to rear its ugly head.
And from a slightly tangential viewpoint, some of the reaction is also similar to the Deaf community's reaction to the possibility of a cure. Working around their disability has caused them to form a culture of their own, so in their eyes, the existence of a cure is an implicit threat of genocide of some form.
Besides it being anecdotal and not applicable to everyone, you also run the risk of the Bashir issue, where there's the possibility that someone would be just fine growing up (at least going by Mirror Bashir), but their parents try to get them bumped up because they're not doing as well as they would like, or they're pressured into it just by virtue of being different.
The problem is where you draw the line. Even with just "disease and disorders", that is fantastically broad category, and is very much up to interpretation.
It wasn't all that long ago that being attracted to members of the same sex was considered a disorder of sexual deviancy, on par with paedophilia, and there some conditions are arguably benign enough that they don't warrant that kind of treatment.
The modern interpretation is generally that if the patient's quality of life is not affected, then they don't really need a medical procedure done. Someone whose organs are backwards, or has a single fused kidney instead of two, for example, doesn't need to undergo an immensely complex surgery to have them put in their common places/reshaped, since that arrangement doesn't cause them any issues.
You could argue the same for neurodevelopmental disorders. If the patient's quality of life is severely harmed, then yes, treatment might be something worth considering, but you also don't want to blanket apply that across the board.
That aside, I'm also not sure that GATTACA is quite the best example to choose, considering that in that universe, genetically designed/augmented people were both preferred, and the only ones allowed to take many roles, creating a permanent underclass of naturally-born people who really only qualified for janitorial jobs, and things no-one else wanted to take.
I don't want to be thought of as rude, but it's incredibly insulting to use the word "genocide" to describe, say, cochlear implants.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Hitler and Stalin didn't force Jews, gay people, etc. to convert to Christianity; they were killed for being "wrong". An entire people were nearly wiped out via mass murder.
That's what genocide is. MASS MURDER.
You're comparing possible genetic therapy to allow people to blend in, to !!!MASS MURDER!!!
EDIT: I thought of a better analogy: people who are paraplegic due to spinal injury, and stem cell research. There's promising research into curing some spinal injuries previously untreatable, which would allow people to walk again. The argument many disabled communities make, is that doing so deprives that person, and the world, of a different life experience where they can live a meaningful life in a wheelchair, and that treating their injury is no different than throwing them into an oven at a Nazi mercy center. It leaves out entirely the wishes of the individual, suggesting it's more important to be a visible disabled person than their personal wishes.
Suggesting that, say, your child could avoid having to learn coping mechanisms to deal with ADHD by never having ADHD in the first place, isn't murder. Now, testing your fetus and aborting it because it's going to be disabled, on the other hand...
Raphael Lemkin, writing in 1944 in the very paper that first established the term "genocide", wrote the following: