Gene Therapy Creates Strong Super-Rats 414
srstoneb writes "The AP is reporting about a
gene therapy study in which muscle tissue in rats is modified to grow at an accelerated rate. The researchers are mainly interested in combating muscular dystrophy, but obviously there are other potential applications, both good and bad, for a treatment which makes you stronger. Athletic ethics are addressed in the article (it's in the sports section, after all), and rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe regular Tom Galloway -- who posted the link there, where I saw it -- made a comparison to the 'super-soldier serum' that created Captain America. Based on the article, a vaguely Wolverine-like healing factor is another benefit as the therapy allows faster recovery from injury. We already had a non-powered superhero
reported last year. Who knows what the future may hold? ^_^" (And that's not the only natural-born superhero.)
How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are Athletic Orginizations so concerned? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's like saying that someone with bad eyesight shouldn't get glasses. If this therapy is as side-effect free as claimed, then why shouldn't people be allowed to use it?
After all, implants and other non-essential plastic surgery is legal...
Re:new gene therapy (Score:2, Insightful)
Knowledge is not something that should be stored away for a privileged few. Be it used for the benefit or destruction of humanity, we're still better off being aware of it than to be ignorant of it. You can't fight off what you can't see.
How we use knowledge is up to the ethics of the people it's shared with. Like anything else, majority will usually win.
Bad side effects (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at TNG, the advance imune system also kills.
This is going to be a trip! (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me old science fiction story from one of the OMNI's paperbacks. About Olimpic games and all US and Russian teams having genetically modified memebers. Everything was there IIRC. Swimmers with fins, wrestlers with with TRex like bodies and well Russian boxer (who wins gold medal by several points) having his brain in his... well... ass.
Re:Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thankfully the mods came and fixed it. *WhEw*
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just where do you draw the line?
Drugs in sport (Score:5, Insightful)
The stupid thing is that if they were just in it for the prize money, they could have taken up golf and got paid far more for the onerous duty of wearing a particular brand of patterned sweater.
Exactly... fine balance required (Score:5, Insightful)
Rheumatoid arthritis, mixed connective tissue disease, Lupus, etc... all are autoimmune, and are a result of the body's immune system attacking itself. These diseases can be devilishly difficult to diagnose and treat... there's a reason why Rheumatology is its own medical specialty. Some of the drugs the rheumatologists use are potentially nasty, and include transplant drugs, and chemotheraputic agents... not stuff for the faint of heart.
By the same token, when you start monkeying around with DNA, you need to be careful what genes you activate or deactivate... Cancer is fundamentally a genetic disease, and a real possibility if you get an unregulated growth gene (or you inadvertantly turn off a suppressor gene). Cancers are funny things; they can even respond to simple hormones... precisely why women with a breast cancer history aren't advised to receive hormone replacement therapy.
Gene therapy has had some successes, but it's really in its infancy... I'd be awfully leery about using it just to bulk up at the gym. On the other hand, if you have a lethal genetic defect, and you're going to die without it, have at it. Forget Hans and Franz... you can find quite a few patients with potentially lethal genetic diseases (Cystic Fibrosis, etc) who'd be much better candidates for gene therapy than some weight-lifter.
It bears repeating... using it for simple body-building is absolutely foolhardy... instead of growing big pectoral muscles, you might inadvertently be growing yourself a big fat tumor... that'll look great at the beach.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:5, Insightful)
When customers stop buying it, corporations will stop selling it. The anti-GM camp is vocal, but small. The majority of consumers just want vast amounts of cheap food and aren't too bothered how or where it comes from. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it is just how it is.
Simple answer: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Antibiotics are our only tools against the bacterial infections that killed untold millions before the 20th century. People forget that before the invention of antibiotics, a simple cut or scratch could lead to infection and death. And now we want to throw all that away, simply for cheaper meat?
Can you be sure that the cost savings of agricultural antibiotics are passed onto consumers, anyway? Let us not forget that agriculture in the US is massively subsidised by the government (albeit to a lesser extent than in EU or Japan). And I don't know about you, but looking at current epidemic of obesity, I would say that we get enough meat already.
Re:Why are Athletic Orginizations so concerned? (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I think they should have two seperate athletic leagues - the normal one, and an indy league in which steroids, gene-therapy and performance enhancing drugs are allowed. It would make for an interesting competition. Give the scientists an arena.
As much as I like the idea, I would tend to think that exactly the opposite situation is more in agreement with our world of today: we use to welcome our Ever-New, Propaganda-Enhanced, Lobby-Nourished, Plastic-Surgery-Optimized Overlords.
Indie movies, indie music, indie software, indie encyclopedias... are generally associated with "low budget, yet high quality" duo to the phenomenal, sincere motivation of the participants. Mainstream movies, music, software and mass media, in contrast, do not look exactly like an ideal of "fair play". Why should athletism be exactly the opposite?
Steroid Psychosis (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to be dose-dependent, and your chance of developing it is independent of whether you've had it in the past (ie. just because you went nuts one time, doesn't mean you'll do it again). Your odds also seem to vary depending on why you're receiving the steroids, suggesting that the initial disease process plays a role.
It's also more common in women than men (no joke intended or implied).
Some people don't like steroids, but I do (having been prescribed them in the past)... they give you lots of energy, all your little aches and pains go away, and you feel good. (there is a certain amount of euphoria with steroids). But there's a downside... a big downside. Check any medical text (or the PDR) for the long-term side effects of steroid use. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Ok, you looking at it? Yeah... that's the list I'm talking about... the one that goes on for several pages (and includes "roid rage")... you don't want to get on the long-term steroid train unless you absolutely have NO alternatives. That said, properly applied in the proper dose and for the proper duration, they're great, helpful, and lifesaving drugs... one of the most useful drug classes in modern medicine's arsenal.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:5, Insightful)
The SAY they want food labelled, but they still BUY unlabelled food. A corporation only cares (or even knows) what you DO, not what you SAY.
I challenge everyone who says they're anti-GM to reflect that in their buying behaviour. 'Cos if they won't, then that demonstrates what they really believe.
Re:pfft.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Angle-grinder man's methods may not be the right way to get things changed, but hopefully his antics will receive some more attention. His main problem is that he's just one guy. For some reason, if you're in a group of some minimum size, you get away with anything (like breaking into military bases), but if you're less than the minimum number, they treat you like a vandal or troublemaker rather than giving you the exalted status of 'activist'.
Re:Why are Athletic Orginizations so concerned? (Score:5, Insightful)
Human kind has, for the most part, long since stopped selecting for any survival based trait. You want to talk about things that fuck with national selection? Talk birth control, talk college tuition. The upper classes have fewer children because these children cost money and cost time. The lower classes have more children because they tend to be less educated about birth control and ways to avoid this as well as somewhat more deluded as to the roll a child will play in their lives.
What you're doing is taking something many people have an aversion to (intrusive gene therapy etc) and using it as a rational for why bloody wars that clean out the working classes are good. You're basically making the argument that rich beautiful people (most of whom got beautiful primarily by virtue of being rich) are actually better in a vague "scientific evolutionary" sense than the rest of us.
The corollary is that the poor and ugly people are worse. The same logic was used to justify the sterilization movements in the United States and the extermination of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
Yea.... real insightful.
Re:Why are Athletic Orginizations so concerned? (Score:4, Insightful)
Things like vitamins, ginseng, and creatine can provide a performance boost but aren't banned because there is little to no risk with using them (except in extreme overdoses). There are also a myriad of other substances that they don't care to test for because they don't help performance.
There are also concerns about things that would undermine the spirit of the sport -- for example, high jumpers using springed shoes or Tour de France cyclists using motors. If gene therapy could produce super-muscular athletes, it would undermine the spirit of competition in a similar way; competition would become more a contest of who has the better gene therapist than who trained the hardest and smartest.
Of course, innate genetic talent is a key factor to athletic success which allows some to win without the best training. However, such genetic differences are allowed not becuase they are desirable, but because they are unavoidable. In a perfectly fair competition everybody would have the same genetic talents; but that isn't possible so it's best to focus on leveling the playing field by reducing the impact of other differences that are unrelated to training.
AGM is an ass (Score:3, Insightful)
That AngleGrinder Man is an ass. The automobile is a menace. It pollutes. Causes sprawl. Is both personally and publicly VERY VERY expensive. Dangerous. Smelly. And encourages poor health.
London has every Right to want to make selfish auto-drivers play by the rules. The Auto is NOT the be-all-end-all public-policy device that needs satisfying.
Because I advocate sustainability, I ride my bike. I am damn tired of my Municipal, Provincial and Federal Taxes [iclei.org] being spent to bandage up crash victims, insure the public against this menace, watch the best agricultural land get run over by big-box consumer-depots, animals and plants get paved under, water bespoiled, and on and on all because some asshat thinks its his right to scream 100 km/h through my residential neighbourhood and park on the sidewalk.
If there is any hope, the public is going to have to adjust its perspective/tolerance of the Auto and its destructive culture.
If fucking tired of it, and this AngleGrinder Man is an ignorant fucking tool... By the way. I work for one of the Big Three NorthAmerican AutoCo's.
Re:Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Comedy Rats aside . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I can understand why some people feel that you shouldn't have kids if you are a bearer of some genetic disease. I think they are stupid. The step from there to euthanizing all the people with said disease is so small to be frightening.
This is exactly the kind of thing Hitler wanted--a perfect race free from defects. In his world everyone with Leukemia, Muscular Dystrophy, AIDS, etc, would be euthanized quickly and efficiently. What a nightmarish idea, but not too far.
My brother, in is normal insensitive manner, is one of the people who would rather abort a child than know it had some mental handicap. The people who talk about you (Tetsugaku-San) not having children are in the same boat, and this is very much the type of thing Hitler would have wanted. Get rid of all the freaks--anyone who makes us uncomfortable should be dead.
What a load of crap! Personally, I am glad that our society does not currently engage in such 'genetic cleansing'. I don't want to live in a society were its wrong to be different.
I do agree with you on the idea that if gene therapy can prevent the transmission of certain problems (such as MD), then go for it. But to deny a life because you can't prevent it? That is criminal in my mind.
Now, if you didn't want to have children (so that you wouldn't pass that on), I would applaud you for being noble, but I say to all the trolls, THAT IS EVERY INDIVIDUAL'S CHOICE, and should NOT be made by the government!
Does this hold true for things like AIDS? No, not necessarily, since an AIDS born child is likely to have AIDS too, and survival is unlikely. But, with the miracle of modern medicine, that is becoming less true (from what I understand), and soon a baby born to parents with AIDS will have very little chance of having the disease. In which case, more power to them. Perhaps they will teach their children to avoid the things that got them infected with AIDS in the first place (assuming it wasn't one of the VERY few cases of a hospital working becoming infected).
I think I am rambling, but that's just the after effect of the medicine (migraine). Perhaps since I have a tendency to get migraines I shouldn't have kids (it might be genetic). Wait--too late.
Level playing field, sort of (Score:4, Insightful)
My problem with performance enhancing drugs is that they hurt the athletes - people should not ruin their lives in order to compete; they should not be under *pressure* to destroy themselves in order to compete.
To the extent that gene therapy might-merely-give everyone the benefit of the "best" possible human genes, I don't have a problem with it. Likewise, any hypothetical performance enhancing drug that was not harmful - I wouldn't have a problem with that. None of these things eliminate the elements of Skill, Discipline and Dedication.
The problem, of course, is that in "optimizing" a person for athletic performance you may pay an opportunity cost - in the form of sociability, intellectual development or lifespan.
Performance enhancement should be regulated to make sure that the athletes are not harmed - which is a crime AGAINST the athlete and not BY the athlete. Who cares about CHEATING when someone could fucking die?
In the case of this treatment - it strikes me that this is something that most people would benefit from, actually. If it is safe (which is a VERY big if) then in a modern human (with no calorie shortage, indeed an excess) this treatment could be expected to have a favorable impact on lifespan, and on health and vitality particularly in late old age (where loss of muscle mass -> related conditions are a major health issue). The chief effect of forcing someone to evolve more muscle tissue is to reduce the amount of adipose tissue (fat.) Of course it is much more complicated than that and I don't doubt that there are side effects for a treatment of this kind which would need to be considered, but - are we going to deny athletes a treatment that the general population takes in order to IMPROVE their health? Clearly not.
Voodoo Genetics? (Score:3, Insightful)
It didn't work for the economy. It won't work for the gene pool.
Seriously though, evolutionary pressure (encompassing the workings of both Natural and "Socioeconomic" selection) among human beings (if it still functions at all) is far too subtle and complicated to be used as rationale for or against any of this. To put it bluntly, we are too stupid to figure out exactly how (if) it works on us. The complexity of human behavior makes it nearly impossible to figure out what traits give modern humans a significant reproductive advantage.
My personal theory (developed in the course of getting my BA in Anthropology) is that because human beings evolved in a "tribal," hunter-gatherer environment, a lot of the problems we encounter in the modern world are a result of our "primitive" minds and bodies trying to cope with the amazing complexity of the world around us - a complexity we created piece by piece. In essence, we are not cut out to handle the world we have made, so each of us must muddle through as best we can and take solace in knowing that noone really knows what the hell they are doing in this life. (IMO the most fucked-up people are the ones that think they understand it all.)
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe this is true at all. I think that people believe that government regulates meat production so that it is perfectly safe, hygenic and humane. If this were true, all they have to do is choose the cheapest source.
Unless they're paying careful attention they simply don't know exactly how nasty feed lots are; at least not until the recent mad cow scare made what cattle are fed a news story.
Seriously, how many people knew that cattle in feed lots are sometimes fed chicken shit? OK not literally chicken shit, but the sweepings off the floor of chicken coops, of which chicken shit is the major component. It reduces the cost of beef, and it probably doesn't have a direct effect on human health, but it's a miserable way to treat a herbivorous animal.
I'm not squeamish about eating beef, and I have no problems with raising animals for food and eating them. But the nastiness of the feedlot system bothers me. For me, doing literally anything to the animal which will increase its market weight to cost ratio goes too far. I'd like it if I had a choice other than becoming a vegetarian. I for one would pay a premium for range fed beef or even beef from certified humane feed lots, if my supermarket would carry it.
Unfortunately I don't anticipate a change anytime soon, unless we get another mad cow case and more publicity about the beef production system.
Re:Why are Athletic Orginizations so concerned? (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution is a reaction, not a progression.
We cannot selectively breed ourselves, picking the best traits for survival, because we don't know what traits are best for survival!
To ensure the survival of the species (humanity) we need a large and diverse gene pool from which to draw from should there ever be a significant environmental change (and by environmental, I'm talking about either the real environment or our social environment), we'll have the resources to combat it!
It's like this: wheat. Most of the wheat now grown in the US and other countries is from one genetic strain. If its environment deviates significantly from what is now standard, that wheat is dead. If a disease breaks out that affects that strand, the wheat is dead. If a predator develops that voraciously feeds on that wheat, it is dead. It has nothing left. It has no more genetic tricks up its sleeve. If there were multiple strains of wheat, some would die, some would live, and those that live would have reacted well to the environment. But that doesn't mean that the strains that live are better than those before it! It just means that they were able to cope with a particular stress in a viable manner.
As it stands now, thanks to millions of years of change and mutation, we as a species are incredibly diverse, and very healthy for it. If we were to start to remove parts of that diversity, even if we think that it is for our own good, then we start to mess with things that we simply can't predict because we don't know what the future stresses will be.
You're like someone on a sailboat with a prevailing wind going right where you want to go who says, "These oars are just slowing us down. They weigh a lot and they aren't very good at catching the wind and they're proud of it! Let's throw them overboard!" It can make a stupid kind of sense, until the wind dies down.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the amount of funds that the biotech companies are putting into alleviating hunger and malnutrition is well BELOW 1% of the total research on GM crops.
GM Golden Rice is heavily used by the pro-GM lobby, but in actual fact, even the organisation which originally did the research has admitted that the benefits have been hugely overexaggerated, and that golden rice would do very little to solve the problem - an adult would have to eat 9kg of this rice to satisfy their minimum daily requirement, and a pregnant woman twice that quantity.
The reality is that to provide enough food for the people already here you can either use massive amounts of chemicals to increase crop yields (definitely bad for environment) or GM foods (some possible dangers but hopefully we can control them in a reasonable manner).
Nonsense. The strongly pro-GM UK government commissioned studies on this to decide whether we should commercialise GM crops. Much to their disappointment, in 2 out of 3 cases, GM crops were more damaging to the environment than the equivelent crops grown with conventional methods.
In the 3rd case, GM was found to be less damaging, but only when compared to a conventional pesticide so toxic the EU has since banned it. I.e., if this study was redone with the pesticide that farmers would now use, this study would have shown 3 out of 3 crops caused MORE damage to the environment than the equivelent conventional growing methods.
The anti-GM movement hasn't conclusively proven that GM is dangerous. But the pro-GM lobby has certainly not conclusively proved that it is safe, nor have they proved that there are any significant benefits.
Go and look for studies into the effect of GM on humans. There are virtually none. There are a few on rats, and some of them have shown adverse health effects.
This doesn't mean that GM is dangerous, but it does mean we need to do more research.
Re:Simple answer: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is there a need to impose this sort of idealism upon the children? Do they really and truly need to be Olympians to be happy? Or is it about the parent, whose lack of esteem ends up ruining the chilrens' lives?
Having the parents choose their childrens' attributes arbitrarily smacks of eugenics.
Gene therapy really needs to be limited to therapy. Who out there would argue with getting rid of Altzheimers, for example? The 100-m dash is pretty damn trivial, by comparison.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice attempt to put words in my mouth.
Genes do occasionally cross species (a process known as "horizontal gene transfer") via viral infection. This is very rare, as organisms have mechanisms to reject foreign genetic material. Genetic modification techniques are designed to make it easier for genes from one species to be incorporated into the genome of another - it therefore increases the likelihood of horizontal gene transfer.
Let me give you some advice on rhetoric: this statement is so ridiculous that it undermines any credibility that your argument might otherwise have. Comparing the desire to know what's in your food with racial discrimination...the absurdity speaks for itself.
However, I'll point out that Black people have been around on this planet long enough - longer that White people, probably - to prove that interacting with them will not cause a White person harm. (That's putting aside the issue of whether dividing people into racial groups is even meaningful.) The same cannot be said of GM food crops.
You can't solve a sociological problem with a technological approach; and this particular technology makes the problem worse, not better.
Re:Simple answer: (Score:3, Insightful)
Arnold once had unusually small calves for a bodybuilder -- bad enough that he would hide them when he posed. Rather than giving up or getting calf implants, he spent thousands of hours building them. He compensated for his weakness.
If someone is incapable of becoming a bodybuilder, they might be a capable sprinter.
If someone is incapable of being a professional athlete, perhaps they are capable of being an a chess master.
In my humble opinion, too many people limit their ability to succeed by artificially narrowing their options. I believe a person is more likely to achieve success by trying new things figuring out what they enjoy and what they are good at, and then doing those things.
I also believe that gene therapy won't level the playing field... It will simply replace the winners who have good genes with those who can afford the best gene treatment (or get the best results.)
And for what it's worth, success always has an element of luck... Ask some of the talented (and unknown) bands.
Re:Why are Athletic Orginizations so concerned? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your superior genes don't give you a grasp of history or language apparently. I said the Nazis used the same justification of the Jews. The Nazi attacks on the Jews were often justified in the name of the "racial purity" of the German People. There's a reason the Nazis used body ratios and family history to determine a person's racial purity and weather or not they belonged to the so called Jewish Race.
Were the Jews a scapegoat? Certainly. But anyone who's even passingly familiar with the political and social climate of Nazi Germany can explain the racial justifications behind the extermination of the Jews.
Jews weren't the only targets of the Nazi regime. The death camps claimed not only Jews and political enemies, but also the mentally retarded, deformed, and handicapped in Europe. Hitler sought to purge from his society those elements he thought were harmful to the racial superiority of the German People.
The Nazis gave eugenics a bad rap, and maybe it's time we realized that eugenics is nothing to be afraid of.
Eugenics: The study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding.
As employed, this is the forced sterilization of people by the government to attempt to prevent the expression of undesirable traits in the future. The Virginia Eugenics laws (which ultimately served as the template for similar laws in Nazi Germany) allowed the state to sterilize those deemed to be unfit to breed.
I'm not even going to quote from your somewhat disturbing characterization of African Americans as genetically inferior to white people, nor am I going to address the both terrifying and disheartening implications of that characterization.
Realize, however, that the veneration of ignorance you speak of is alive and well in rural white communities as well. In fact, the veneration of ignorance is a universal trend among the economically disadvantaged as long as the education system remains disproportionately targeted at the middle and upper classes. Want to solve this problem? The answer isn't sterilizing the poor; it's putting more time and energy into technical education and getting away from the mythos that everyone should go to college.
We then go on into a shockingly revealing one liner in which you assert that IQ is determined by genetics. In fact there are few if any reputable studies supporting this claim. Genetics certainly play a roll, but a bewildering assortment of factors act on a human being, beginning well before birth and progressing until after puberty that can have profound impact on IQ.
If you're paying so much in taxes that your yearly tax burden exceeds the cost of your home, travel expenses, education, and all recreational activities combined I can only presume you are exceedingly bad at math and tax forms, or that you simply live with your parents and don't get out much. Given your narrow minded view of the world the latter seems more likely.
And now we get to your grand finale. Let me get this straight. We want to fix our economy by enacting laws mandating the forced sterilization of all persons who you deem to be "uneducated, unemployable, and have demonstrated themselves culturally unreceptive to learning."
So, once we've spent billions of dollars rounding up an appreciable portion of the people that make our world work (sanitary workers, waiters, construction workers, food service personnel) and exposing them to powerful radiological sterilization equipment, thereby depriving them of liberty and arguably property without due process of law, what then?
When we've eliminated these lower portions of our economic classes who will do that work? When we tell these people they can't have children and that they don't contribute enough to our society to make it worth