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The telepath virus and genetics
DarthCaligula
Elite Ranger
in Babylon 5
Since the Psi Corps conspiracy has been on my mind a lot lately I decided to watch The Face of the Enemy again, and there are some things that stood out to me that seem kind of confusing. I don't know too much about genetics (though I seem to know more than most people), but what Edgars says about his virus seems to have a big flaw in it. Edgars says that the virus will only affect people with the telepath gene, so normals will be fine, and only telepaths will die and need his medicine. But in Dust to Dust, Bester and the dust dealer both say that dust works by affecting the telepath gene, which is in most humans, but too weak to do anything, so only those who actually have any telepathic ability, even someone as weak as Ivanova, are actually considered telepaths and are required by law to join Psi Corps or take sleepers.
So what I'm getting at here is that if this virus targets the telepath gene, then this means that there would be a lot of normals who would die of the virus as well, the majority of humanity it would seem, and since this gene was created by the Vorlons, it should logically spread to other species, requiring them to either make their own treatment, or possibly be dependent on Edgars Industries as well.
I seem to remember that in J. Gregory Keyes's Psi Corps trilogy, he says that rather than a single gene being responsible for telepathy, it's a series of genes, and they must all be present for someone to be a telepath, which sounds much more plausible to me, and it easily explains how there could be two normal parents with a telepathic child.
Also, is this an inconsistency about Lyta in the episode? She says that she was brought in by Psi Corps when she was three, but in The Gathering, she and G'kar comment on how she's a sixth generation telepath, though her identicard has a higher number. So it was already established that she comes from a long line of telepaths. In the Psi Corps trilogy, it's revealed that one of Lyta's ancestors was actually one of the key founders of Psi Corps, and we get a lot of detail about others in the Alexander line, but those books didn't exist yet when this episode was written of course, and it doesn't really matter when talking about this.
Anyway, if she's a sixth or higher generation telepath, then why would she have been taken in when she was three? Shouldn't her mother have also been a member of Psi Corps? Could it be that they missed her genetic marker at first, and so she was not part of Psi Corps for the first few years, when another genetic test confirmed that she too was a telepath afterall as well?
So what I'm getting at here is that if this virus targets the telepath gene, then this means that there would be a lot of normals who would die of the virus as well, the majority of humanity it would seem, and since this gene was created by the Vorlons, it should logically spread to other species, requiring them to either make their own treatment, or possibly be dependent on Edgars Industries as well.
I seem to remember that in J. Gregory Keyes's Psi Corps trilogy, he says that rather than a single gene being responsible for telepathy, it's a series of genes, and they must all be present for someone to be a telepath, which sounds much more plausible to me, and it easily explains how there could be two normal parents with a telepathic child.
Also, is this an inconsistency about Lyta in the episode? She says that she was brought in by Psi Corps when she was three, but in The Gathering, she and G'kar comment on how she's a sixth generation telepath, though her identicard has a higher number. So it was already established that she comes from a long line of telepaths. In the Psi Corps trilogy, it's revealed that one of Lyta's ancestors was actually one of the key founders of Psi Corps, and we get a lot of detail about others in the Alexander line, but those books didn't exist yet when this episode was written of course, and it doesn't really matter when talking about this.
Anyway, if she's a sixth or higher generation telepath, then why would she have been taken in when she was three? Shouldn't her mother have also been a member of Psi Corps? Could it be that they missed her genetic marker at first, and so she was not part of Psi Corps for the first few years, when another genetic test confirmed that she too was a telepath afterall as well?
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