Can we genetically engineer a super athlete?

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Is a possible to create a super athlete through genetic engineering?

Not with current technique and technology.

ruveyn

We made a computer who can beat everybody at Chess.
What would be the point of making a person who could beat everybody at sports?

What was the point of making a computer that can beat everybody at Chess?

Maybe for artificial intelligence research.

You make a super athlete monster with Growth Hormones, Anabolic Steroids,
and lock them in a "gym" with kilotons of nutritious food. Then it busts out and kills everyone.

Or see a Rocky Horror Show. (Campy Frankenstein Parody)

Not with genetic engineering, per se. But it is possible through a combination of various techniques to significantly alter someones athletic performance. Drugs, hormones, and a newer "gene doping" can be used in combination to give a pretty startling effect. But, most of the methods are detectable and tested for in official games of sport.

Perhaps not at the moment. But conceptually, there isn't much difference between genetically engineering corn to be more drought-resistant and engineering an animal to have more efficient oxygen transport or some such.

I think it's only a matter of time before something like this happens. Maybe not next week or next year. But it will happen.

Oh it's already happened. In small lab critters.

The issue is that human genetic alteration is a touchy subject. Politically charged to boot. This means for someone to engage in the type of research and testing of these sorts of alteration on humans, would be highly difficult. Only certain countries have laws (or lack therof) that would allow for it. Not to mention the scientists in question would have to be willing and capable of this sort of procedure. And if it did come to pass that you managed to gather the people who knew how, and where willing to do this, in a place where you could do this, with the equipment necessary for it, and actually suceeded in doing so...it's quite possible it wouldn't even reach the press.

In the long run, that won't stop it from happening. There was a thread a few weeks ago about bringing back extinct animals, and the ethics involved. I think the same reasoning applies here. It will most likely be a generation or two before we see the radical shifts in ethical positions that would make genetic engineering on humans acceptable. But Stone Man is right ... it will happen eventually.

Throughout history, ethics have never stopped the progession of technology, assuming there was a profit to be made from it. If someone can make money from it, then the technology will be used.

Applying this idea to sports, I think the outcry over steroids is just a drop in the bucket compared to what is going to happen with bio engineering. How do you test someone for "altered genes"? You could make the argument that those humongous football players and 7-ft tall basketball players are "freaks" of nature anyway. Is it really that much of a stretch to engineer artificial freaks?

Why? we got steroids for that...

I think that several ideas have been put forward, like webbed fingers and toes as well as the ability to breathe underwater using gills, or runners with extremely long feet and more aerodynamic shape (can't remember how they would achieve that). All that might sound far-fetched, but my guess is that all that will happen.

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HOW DID YOU KNOW?

This is already happening in a sense, with the exact "gender" of the South African runner Semenya (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090911/ap_ ... der_test_5) raising interesting questions.

But sports are about more than muscles or bone: you need the right kind of brain to operate the equipment, so the genetic tweaks to create something like Fuzzy will be tricky.

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we have been genetically engineering plants and animals for at least ten thousand years.

Long before watson and crick cracked the DNA code in the late 1940's.

If our unlettered ancestors hadnt been able to genetically manipute plants and animals -agriculture would never have happened. A niether would civilization itsself.

Genetically engineering human athletes, in principal, is no different than the breeding of blue ribbon dairy cattle.

The Victorians ( who invented dog and cat shows) could have done it, and so could have the ancient Greeks (who originated the Olympics).

It was always possible- but apparently- it was never feasible-nor profitable.
The victorians ( or ancient greeks) could have forced people to breed over several generations to create championship athletes in the same way that the victorians started the practice of creating pure breed pets.
In theory it would have been easier for the Greeks and victorian Southerners to do so than for us-because both groups practiced slavery.

But there wouldve been atleast one problem.


Ethics aside-there is the problem of time- human generations are much longer than those of most mammals.

Today- we have this sudden seemingly Promethian ability to directly manipulate genes. But does this sea change really make human breeding anymore feasible?

It would still take several generations to get champion breeds.

Breeding humans requires a bigger investment in time and in money than does building a chess playing computer.

What would be the payoff? Totalitarian dictatorships are the only players I can think of who would have both the incentive and the resources to invest in such a thing.

A Hitler ( trying to prove the existence of his master race), or a Stalin (trying to score points for his Utopian political system) might indeed be willing to take on a centurey long human athlete breeding program just win his nation gold at a distantly future olympics ( even though the despot would never live to see the fruits of the program ).. I cant imagine anyone else doing so.