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3arod13
06-07-2009, 06:19 AM
Interesting Article - Your Thoughts?

joelsabi
06-07-2009, 09:17 AM
Tony,
Thanks for the post.
Your article got me thinking about what will be accepted in the future. Sometime I wonder if we will relate to designer athletes later in the near future as a product of gene therapy. I am thinking super engineered athletes will be accepted by the public if gene therapy is discovered through research studies to be safe, which is not the case with steroids. There is no doubt that some super genetically engineered slugger will have the ability to surpass the current homerun record but then again they may be equally balanced by super genetically engineered pitchers too. The other question would be will we care as much about the records by this point in the near future.
I will always remember when growing up the voice of Vin Scully saying “that athlete has so much God given talent.” I would hope this sentiment holds true 20 years from now.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/04/1059849338997.html

Condemned to be superhuman
August 5, 2003
Scientists have reached a point where they can fine-tune genes in embryos. If we let that happen, argues Bill McKibben, it will be the end of human nature.
For the first few kilometres of the marathon, I was still fresh enough to look around, to pay attention. I remember mostly the muffled thump of several thousand pairs of expensive sneakers padding the Ottawa pavement.
By about the 37 kilometre mark, things were becoming clear. With every 100 metres the race became less a physical test and more a mental one. The finish line swam into my squinted view, and I stagger-sprinted across.
I was the 324th person to cross, an unimportant finisher in an unimportant time in an unimportant race. It mattered not at all what I had done. But it mattered to me. When it was done, I had a clearer sense of myself, of my power and my frailty.
Few things are more basic than running. And yet it is entirely possible that we will be among the last generations to feel that power and frailty. Genetic science may soon offer humans, among many other things, the power to bless their offspring with a vastly improved engine. For instance, scientists may find ways dramatically to increase the amount of oxygen that blood can carry. When that happens, we will, though not quite as Isaiah envisioned, be able to run and not grow weary.
Attempts to alter the human body are nothing new in sport, of course. Athletes have been irradiated and surgically implanted with monkey glands; they have weight-trained with special regimens designed to increase mitochondria in muscle cells; they have lived in special trailers pressurised to simulate high altitudes.
The Tour de France has been interrupted by police raids time and again; in 2001 Italian officials found a "mobile hospital", stocked with hormones, drugs and synthetic blood products, trailing the Giro d’Italia.
But what if, instead of crudely cheating with hypodermics, we began literally to program children before they were born to become great athletes?
We won’t simply lose races, we’ll lose racing: we’ll lose the possibility of the test, the challenge, the celebration that athletics represents. Will anyone be impressed with your dedication? More to the point, will you be impressed with your dedication?
Right up until this decade, the genes that humans carried in their bodies were exclusively the result of chance — of how the genes of the sperm (father) and the egg (mother) combined. The only way you could intervene in the process was by choosing who you would mate with — and that was as much wishful thinking as anything. But that is changing.
We now know two different methods to change human genes. The first, and less controversial, is called somatic gene therapy. This begins with an existing individual — someone with, say, cystic fibrosis. Researchers try to deliver new, modified genes to some of his/her cells, usually by putting the genes aboard viruses they inject into the patient, hoping that the viruses will infect the cells and thereby transmit the genes. If the therapy works, the proteins causing the cystic fibrosis should diminish, and with them some of the horrible symptoms. Somatic gene therapy is, in other words, much like medicine.
"Germline" genetic engineering, on the other hand, is something very novel. "Germ" here refers not to microbes, but to the egg and sperm cells, the "germ" cells of the human being. Scientists intent on genetic engineering would probably start with a fertilised embryo a week or so old. They would tease apart the cells of that embryo and then, selecting one, they would add to, delete or modify some of its genes. They could also insert artificial chromosomes containing predesigned genes. They would then take the cell, place it inside an egg whose nucleus had been removed, and implant the resulting new embryo inside a woman. The embryo would, if all went to plan, grow into a genetically engineered child.
We began doing this with mice in 1978, and we’ve managed the trick with most of the obvious mammals, except one. And the only thing holding us back is a thin tissue of ethical guidelines, which some scientists and politicians are working hard to overturn.
The reason for performing germline genetic engineering is to "improve" human beings — to modify the genes affecting everything from obesity to intelligence, eye colour to grey matter. And to make germline engineering work, you need one more piece of technology: the ability to clone people.
The technique of modifying genes is hard; the success rate is low. It’s very difficult to get a desired new gene into a fertilised egg on a single try. If you had more embryos, your odds would improve. That’s what the people who cloned Dolly the sheep were aiming for: easy access to more embryos so they could "transform" the animals.
"Ultimately," says Michael West, CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, the firm at the cutting edge of these technologies, "the dream of biologists is to have the sequence of DNA, the programming code of life, and to be able to edit it the way you can a document on a word processor."
In some ways, the sequencing of the human genome, heralded as the dawn of the genetic age, may really have marked the sunset of a certain kind of genetic innocence. Instead of finding the expected 100,000 genes, the two teams of competing researchers managed to identify just 30,000. This total is still being debated, but whatever the final count, we have barely twice as many genes as the fruit fly, and only slightly more than the mustard weed. Meanwhile, those 30,000 genes, though "sequenced", were not understood.
Plenty of practical complications make this work harder than editing text on a word processor, too. Even if you could perfect the process, simple physics would place limits on how much you could modify humans.
"If you had a 2.8-metre tall person," says Stuart Newman, a researcher at New York Medical College, "the bone density would have to increase to such a degree that it might outstrain the body’s capability to handle calcium.
"But could you engineer higher intelligence? Increased athletic ability? I have no doubt you could make such changes."
This new world can’t be wished away. The new technology is growing and spreading as fast as the internet grew and spread. One moment you’ve sort of heard of it; the next moment it’s everywhere.
But cloning is just the warm-up act. The main event is germline genetic engineering: not just copying but changing, as we’ve done with plants and animals.
In the autumn of 1998, a year after Dolly the sheep was cloned, another animal emerged that may prove more significant in the long run. Lucy, a black-brown mouse birthed in the Vancouver labs of Chromos Molecular Systems, had an extra pair of chromosomes: artificial chromosomes. She passed them on to her children, and they to theirs. An artificial chromosome makes germline manipulation much, much easier; instead of having to peer through a microscope at an embryo, snipping and splicing the existing DNA in an effort to add, say, a few centimetres to the resulting child, a lab worker could simply insert the prepackaged chromosome.
"It promises to transform gene therapy from the hit-and-miss methods of today into the predictable, reliable procedure that human germline manipulation will demand," says UCLA’s Gregory Stock.
Meanwhile, researchers in Britain and California have produced "designer sperm"; others at Cornell have produced an "artificial womb lining" and hope to have "complete artificial wombs" within a few years.
And so here’s where we are: the genetic modification of humans is not only possible, it’s coming fast; a mix of technical progress and shifting mood means it could easily happen within the next few years. But we haven’t done it yet. For the moment we remain, if barely, a fully human species. And so we have time yet to consider, to decide, to act.
Some of the first germline interventions might well be semi-medical, aimed at eliminating what Princeton biologist Lee Silver calls "predispositions" toward conditions such as obesity. One researcher said, "I did an inventory of myself and discovered that I carry eight nuisance genes. Obviously I am nearsighted — you can tell by my eyeglasses. I have dry skin. I also have a hearing defect in which I have virtually zero memory for music. Wouldn’t it be nice if these genes didn’t have to be carried forward to my descendant?"
Indeed, sheer handsomeness is likely to be one of the earliest aims of genetic intervention. Once you accept the idea that our bodies are essentially plastic, and that it’s OK to manipulate that plastic, then, in the words of Silver, "there’s nothing beyond tinkering". There’s not a feature of the human body that can’t be "enhanced" in some way or another.
"If something has evolved elsewhere, then it is possible for us to determine its genetic basis and transfer it into the human genome," says Silver — just as we have stuck flounder genes into strawberries to keep them from freezing, and jellyfish genes into rabbits and monkeys to make them glow in the dark.
The list of possibilities is as long as the imagination. Some plump for eyes in the back of the head on the theory that it would "make driving safer". Others are more interested in reducing the need to sleep. Half the people I know obsess about getting pudgy. My point is merely that our bodies, or more precisely the bodies of our children, which have always seemed to us more or less a given, are on the verge of becoming true clay. And not just our children’s bodies, but their minds as well. We are starting to catalogue which genes control intelligence, and starting to figure out how to manipulate them. News of such research makes most of us uncomfortable. In part that’s because every racist and xenophobe since the dawn of time has claimed some link between ancestry and aptitude.
However, various specialists have marshalled data from twin and adoption studies to show that anywhere from 40 per cent to 75 per cent of variation in intelligence was inherited. A special issue of American Psychologist published in the aftermath of the furore found a broad agreement among researchers that half of the variation in human intelligence appears to be related to heredity. Half is not all, of course. And IQ is not the same as ability. But IQ tracks uncomfortably close to success — to the kinds of grades you get, and how long you stay in school, and what kind of job you hold, and how much money you make. The correlation is strong enough so that you could argue it might make sense to soup up your child, for either her sake or the planet’s.
By now, the vision of the would-be genetic engineers should be fairly clear. It is to do to humans what we have already done to salmon and wheat, pine trees and tomatoes. That is, to make them better in some way: to delete, modify, or add genes in the developing embryos so that the cells of the resulting person will produce proteins that make them taller and more muscular, or smarter and less aggressive, maybe handsome and possibly straight, perhaps sweet. Even happy. It is, in certain ways, a deeply attractive picture.
But suppose you’re not ready. Say you’re perfectly content with the prospect of a child who shares the unmodified genes of you and your partner. Say you think that manipulating the DNA of your child might be dangerous, or presumptuous, or icky? How long will you be able to hold that line if germline manipulation begins to spread among your neighbours? Maybe not so long as you think.
Another thing is clear — the rich would benefit from genetic engineering far more than the poor. And the gap in power, wealth and education that divides both our society and the world at large would be written into our very biology.
For the moment, even the most enthusiastic advocates of germline manipulation agree that it’s still too risky; the National Bioethics Advisory Commission ruled in 1997 that such work "is not safe to use in humans at this time". But the key words in that ruling were "at this time". Zeal or profit might well force the issue. "The mere fact that there may be unanticipated or long-term side effects will not deter people from pursuing genetic remedies any more than it has in earlier phases of medical development," predicts Francis Fukuyama, of Johns Hopkins University.
None of these arguments quite captures the truly horrifying aspects of this new technology. There is another issue, neither utilitarian nor religious in the usual sense. It is an argument about meaning. What will you have done to your newborn when you have installed into the nucleus of every one of his/her billions of cells a purchased code that will pump out proteins designed to change the child? You will have robbed your child of the chance of understanding its life. Say the child finds itself, at the age of 16, unaccountably happy. Is it the child being happy — finding, perhaps, the girl/boy it will first love — or is it the corporate product inserted within him/her when he/she was a small nest of cells, an artificial chromosome now causing his/her body to produce more serotonin?
In the words of Richard Hayes, one of the leading crusaders against germline manipulation: "Suppose you’ve been genetically engineered by your parents to have what they consider enhanced reasoning ability and other cognitive skills. How could you evaluate whether or not what was done to you was a good thing? How could you think about what it would be like not to have genetically engineered thoughts?"
In other words, by then you will have turned your child into an automaton of one degree or another; and if it only sort of works, you will have seeded the ground for a harvest of neurosis and self-doubt we can barely begin to imagine.
These new technologies show us that human meaning dangles by a far thinner thread than we had thought. What if the ending to our story is already written, our compass already set? What if we have been programmed, or at least must suspect each time we choose a path that we have been nudged in that direction by our engineered cells? Who, then, are we?
Right now our technology is advanced enough to make us comfortable, but not so advanced that it has become us. We have enough insight from Darwin and Freud and Watson and Crick to allow us to understand some of what drives us, but we’re not yet completely reduced to hardware. We have Prozac for the incapacitated and pain-ridden, but it’s not encoded in our genes. We have enough medicine to give most of us a good shot at a long life, but not so much as to turn us into robots. We are suspended somewhere between the prehistoric and the Promethean. Closer to the Promethean. Close enough.
This is an edited extract from Enough: Genetic Engineering and the end of Human Nature, by Bill McKibben, which is released in Australia by Allen & Unwin (rrp A$49.95) on Friday.

CampWest
06-07-2009, 09:19 AM
I have a new title for this article: As Baseball As Pro Wrestling.

My thoughts, Baseball is not pro wrestling. Cheating is not acceptable, because we want to see home runs. Would the old-timers have done steroids? - yes probably some of them. Does that justify some of today's players using steroids? - no.

The problem with the viewpoint this article states is that while its "just a game", thats the point, baseball is just a game. And I want to watch an even and level playing field of the best players in the league. If I were to play a game with my wife, say Monopoly. If I played by the rules, but every time I went to the fridge for another Leinenkugel she snuck in an extra hotel to "pad her stats" I dont think anybody would say, Monopoly, its a spectacle, I want to see as many hotels on Verona Gardens as possible.

Cheating is cheating plain and simple, and nobody should like a cheater nor defend a cheater - especially because they "like to see some gawdy homeruns". If you want to see some gawdy homeruns then go watch one of those professional softball games. If steroids are illegal in the USA and Canada then its illegal in MLB.

Personally, I don't watch pro wrestling. I want to watch clean and fair competition.

BTW, has anybody ever backed or justified a boxer or MMA fighter for using steroids? Or heck even Football?

Baseball is just a game, so there is no need to cheat. There is only one reason for steroids in baseball. Greed. If these guys played baseball for free like me and you, then most probably wouldn't use them.

You defend ARod, probably because you love ARod, but did you defend Bonds before ARod came clean, err dirty? Would you defend Manny, if ARod hadnt been cheating?

CampWest
06-07-2009, 09:23 AM
You defend ARod, probably because you love ARod, but did you defend Bonds before ARod came clean, err dirty? Would you defend Manny, if ARod hadnt been cheating?

To clarify, by "you" I am referring to the author of the article.

suicide_squeeze
06-07-2009, 11:26 AM
Here are my thoughts.

Brian Haynes should be given two weeks vacation without pay.

While on his vacation, I would hope that he comes to visit Los Angeles, where he crosses my path, and somehow I find out that it is "him".

I would proceed to pummel his ignorant Gen-X butt into the ground, relentlessly, unforgivingly....hitting harder with ever scream.



Not really, but it was my thoughts while reading this pathetic expression of complete stupidity.

I have no problem with his fanhood, or his choice of player(s) to follow, but to write off MLB as a sport that just fails to get with the progression of the World because they haven't keep steroids "legal".....leaves me breathless with anger.

What a moron......what an ignorant imbecile. This turd is a symbol of everything (almost everything) that has gone wrong in our society. He obviously missed the part in his schooling days that develops a proper thinking pattern. He obviously wasn't brought up by two parents who nurtured him properly, and led him in a direction of learning what the difference is between right and wrong.

He is basically saying to hell with the record books, it's all about natural progression, and MLB is missing the boat. Yeah, great deduction, turd.

He goes on to show JUST HOW stupid he is by claiming, to the best of him knowledge, which we all can determine isn't very much at all as we read on, Barry Bonds has "never failed a drug test". Really. REALLY?? What planet is this dung heap from? I mean, isn't that one of the MAIN REASONS he'll be facing trial later this month.....because the failed drug tests confiscated from Balco prove Barry Bonds is guilty of perjury? Add to that that he states Barry was participating in something that was "legal"... just makes if painfully clear he's a tool. Taking steroids without a doctor's prescription makes it illegal, you steamy fly-infested cowpie.

And he follows that brain storm up with calling Barry the "undisputed" home run king. I can't think of a crown in the major sports world that has ever HAD a more disputed crown?

I am disgusted by the cavalier (No, not you Chris!) attitude of this poor excuse of a writer, and I don't know why the editor of the paper would allow such garbage to print.....but hey....our media has gone to hell a long way back, so it really isn't that much of a shocker.

Personally, I hope he loses his job, and goes on to what he was really raised to be.

Barry Bonds' pool guy.