Why didn’t transporter designers include a big enough buffer to restore any lost away team member back to the point they beamed off the ship? By TNG timeframe, it seems like the data storage requirements would be easy to solve, especially for a 4-5 person team. As a nerd with backups at work, home, and other places, it just seems sensible.
Of course it opens a whole can of worms with perfect cloning the side effect of any accidental restorations where the original was still in living condition. Or what about someone who gets horribly disfigured during a mission, but not killed…would they allow him to revert to a previous backup, while killing the maimed original? Would people make the same mistakes more often, react with less concern for their personal safety?
On the other hand, think of how much more could be accomplished by a doctor during a medical emergency, if he could beam himself down to a hundred locations at the same time.
Hmmm, could someone pirate another person by copying the transporter transmission? How would unique identity work when you can re-create a person down to a quantum level perfectly, an infinite number of times? Me’thinks the underwold of the Star Trek universe has crimes we can’t even imagine.