Building Better Bodies

[Guest guest]

They are going to tinker with humans and animals and

most commercial plants which will wreck native plants.

How can people be so stupid as

to deliberatly wreck life on this planet.F.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/opinion/25kristof.html?th

 

August 25, 2004

OP-ED COLUMNIST

 

Building Better Bodies

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

 

For a glimpse of what post-human athletes may look

like beginning in the 2012 or 2016 Olympics, take a

look at an obscure breed of cattle called the Belgian

Blue.

 

Belgian Blues are unlike any cows you've ever seen.

They have a genetic mutation that means they do not

have effective myostatin, a substance that curbs

muscle growth. A result is that Belgian Blues are all

bulging muscles without a spot of fat, like bovine

caricatures of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 

These mutants may also point to the future of humans,

particularly athletes. Gene therapies are being

developed that would block myostatin in humans, and

they offer immense promise in treating muscular

dystrophy and the frailty that comes with aging. But

once this gene therapy becomes available for people

who really need it, it'll take about 10 minutes before

athletes are surreptitiously using it, particularly

because, in contrast to today's doping, gene therapy

leaves no trace in the blood or urine.

 

The standard human shape would become different, and

anyone with money could look like a body builder. As

H. Lee Sweeney, chairman of physiology at the

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, writes

in a fascinating article in July's Scientific

American, " The world may be about to watch one of its

last Olympic Games without genetically enhanced

athletes. "

 

Even more important, gene therapy goes to the heart of

an issue that will turn our species upside down in the

coming decades. We are beginning to understand our own

operating system - genes - and we're gaining the

ability to try to " improve " our genetic endowment. If

we do so, the ramifications could be as enormous as

when our ancestors first crawled out of the slime to

live on land.

 

Genetic tinkering gives me the willies. My concern is

not so much the details of blocking myostatin,

although Belgian Blue calves are so muscled that their

mothers are at high risk of dying while giving birth,

as with the possibility that we will irreversibly

change what it is to be human. Geneticists have tried

to improve apples over the last 50 years, producing

larger, prettier species that just aren't as tasty or

as interesting as they used to be; it would be a

tragedy if we did to humans what we've done to apples.

 

Yet gene therapy also offers immense promise.

Injecting genes to block myostatin could help not only

those with muscular dystrophy but also anyone

suffering the routine loss of musculature that comes

with aging. Instead of breaking their hips and limping

about on walkers, nonagenarians could run road races.

 

So far, the experiments have been very impressive. Dr.

Sweeney and his team injected mice with genes that

resulted in muscles 15 to 30 percent larger than in

other mice. And when middle-aged mice were injected

with the gene, their muscles did not weaken in old

age.

 

Other gene therapies are being developed that would

prod the human body to produce more red blood cells, a

huge benefit to athletes. In monkeys and baboons,

these therapies led the red blood cell count to just

about double in 10 weeks.

 

A small number of humans have natural genetic

mutations that are similar, and these people appear to

live normally and to be exceptional athletes. For

example, Eero Mantyranta of Finland was a three-time

gold medalist in cross-country skiing Olympics in the

1960's, and his family later turned out to have a

genetic mutation that produced extremely high levels

of red blood cells.

 

Likewise, The New England Journal of Medicine in June

documented a human version of the Belgian Blues, a boy

with a genetic mutation that interferes with

myostatin. From the moment he was born, he had

extraordinary muscling, and at age 4 he can hold a

3-kilogram dumbbell in each hand with his arms

extended. A European weight-lifting champion is said

to have a similar mutation.

 

Perhaps the most important and complex decision in the

history of our species is approaching: in what ways

should we improve our genetic endowment? Yet we are

neither focused on this question nor adequately

schooled to resolve it.

 

So we desperately need greater scientific literacy,

and it's past time for a post-Sputnik style

revitalization of science education, especially

genetics, to help us figure out if we want our

descendants to belong to the same species as we do.

 

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company