Man, would that be convenient. But. . . .

With permission from Gene Roddenberry, British science fiction writer James Blish wrote a novel (maybe more that one) based on the Star Trek: TOS milieu and characters in which Kirk and McCoy have a most interesting conversation about McCoy's antipathy toward the transporter.

I can't remember it verbatim, but McCoy says something like, "When you go through the transporter, how do you know that the person who assembles at the destination point is the same person who was disassembled at the starting point? Sure, they look the same, and the memories are all replaced, so the reassembled person is absolutely sure they are the same person. But how does one know that the person being disassembled isn't actually killed, and that the person who appears at the beam-down point is a brand new entity? For all practical purposes, it's the same person. But look—suppose you step into the transporter and the awareness that is you suddenly ceases to exist. Then a new awareness that isn't you appears. All the memories are immediately downloaded into the new awareness, and the new entity is absolutely sure that it is you. But it isn't. You no longer exist! Think of it, Jim! By using that thing, we may be killing people by the millions, and we have no way of knowing whether that's what we're doing or not!"   

Hmm.

Don Firth