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.)
Great, thats all we need... (Score:5, Funny)
Wonderful.
I can see the pest control guys kitting up with miniguns and RPGs.
Re:Great, thats all we need... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great, thats all we need... (Score:4, Funny)
Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:5, Informative)
At this point I'll re-use another tired old catch-phrase, which is described on the very same Wikipedia page - "you must be new here"
Re:Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thankfully the mods came and fixed it. *WhEw*
Re:Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:5, Funny)
It is official; Netcraft confirms: Welcoming our new Overlords is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Overlord Welcoming community when IDC confirmed that Overlord Welcoming market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all +5 funny moderations. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that welcoming our new overlords has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Welcoming our new overlords is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Slashdot comprehensive moderation test.
You don't need to be a Soviet Russian to predict Welcoming our new Overlords' future. The hand writing is on the wall: Welcoming our new Overlords faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Welcoming our new Overlords because Welcoming our new Overlords is dying. Things are looking very bad for Welcoming our new Overlords. As many of us are already aware, Welcoming our new Overlords continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Welcoming our new Giant Rat Overlords is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core trolls. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time New Overlord trolls Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Welcoming our new Overlords is dying. All major surveys show that Welcoming our new Overlords has steadily declined in market share. Welcoming our new Overlords is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Welcoming our new Overlords is to survive at all it will be among trolls rated at -1. Welcoming our new Overlords continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Welcoming our new Overlords is dead.
Fact: Welcoming our New Overlords is dying
Re:Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:5, Funny)
You mean to say that in Soviet Russia, new Overlords welcome me? I'm flattered...
Re:Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:2)
Re:Almost too embarrassed to say but.... (Score:3, Funny)
I was just thinking the same thing. At first glance, the first one should have been modded up (but perhaps not all the way to 5), and the rest modded down as "redundant." However, a straightforward application of this joke can't really be justifiably modded up anymore, even if giant ant overlords really were taking over. It's just not funny, informative, or insightful now.
So in conclusion I suppose I'm saying that I for one wel
Someone will be happy (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Someone will be happy (Score:3, Funny)
Splinter first, turtles later (Score:4, Funny)
Algernon kickd me in th nuts! It is sawr.
MOD PARENT "FUNNY" (Score:4, Informative)
Governator (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sorry, I'll post something useful eventually!
Dateline 2020... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dateline 2020... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, I know, it's... weird...
Re:Dateline 2020... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dateline 2020... (Score:3, Funny)
Breath now while it's still Free!
Now they're comparing with fiction (Score:2)
Breaking news. Toms Hardware is going to be benchmarking the Athlon FX-51 against the WOPR from WarGames!
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm all for it... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm all for it... (Score:3, Funny)
How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just where do you draw the line?
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.
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:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:3, Informative)
I only know for sure, that various antibiotica have been banned for feeding in 1997, 1998. I'm not quite sure how far reaching the legislation in 2002 was.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:4, Informative)
What, the success of damaging the health of millions of people? High protein diets increase the risk of heart disease, cancer, kidney damage, and osteoporosis. And weight loss on high-protein diets comes from water loss (as your body tries to urinate out the toxic byproducts of ketosis) and reduced caloric intake, not any magical property of protein.
These diets get one thing right, in that they encourage avoiding foods that spike blood sugar. Everything else about them is dangerously wrong.
Want to know the long-term consequences of using protein and fat to fuel your metabolism rather than clean-burning carbohydrates? Ask a diabetic about the wonderful effects they get to experience.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:5, Informative)
That rather depends where you live.
The UK goverments own research done last year shows that the public mood in the UK "[...] ranged from caution and doubt, through suspicion and scepticism, to hostility and rejection." (Quote lifted directly from the report.)
They also found, interestingly, that people who came into the debate undecided about GM and not knowing much about the issues became more anti-GM the more they found out, which you could interpret as meaning that a significant number of people are not anti-GM out of ignorance, rather than choice.
When customers stop buying it, corporations will stop selling it.
Which is why every major supermarket in the UK has removed GM from their products, and biotech companies are withdrawing from the UK because they don't believe there is a market for GM food.
And attitudes amongst retailers are becoming more anti-GM rather than less, e.g. supermarkets are now starting to even remove products from animals fed on GM.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:5, Informative)
If that were the case, Monsanto [monsanto.com] would have stopped selling Posilac [monsantodairy.com] long ago. On the other hand, when your executives are appointed to the EPA [safe2use.com], and you can prevent the news from airing the truth [pcdf.org], who cares about the puss content [american.edu] of 1/3rd of America's childrens' milk?
Customers have all kinds of choice. It is awareness and influence that are starkly lacking in the modern America.
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: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.
Mad Cow, supersized (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of us already vote with our wallets, and i'd second the notion that it's how to get the idea out there that we might want to know what's in our food. I hate to bring up the same old song again, but the truth is that there are a lot of reasons for GMO food to be labelled, and some of it has to do with current, known allergies, intolerances, and illnesses. Obviously, this won't matter if a GM rat makes it into the food market- anyone who's eating rat probably isn't watching their diet for such things too closely. But when it comes to cows? It's hard enough to find cows that aren't being fed other cows (mad cow disease, anyone?) Do we know what a prion disease would do in a supercow? would they be more immune, or would they just survive longer as incubators, becoming more infectious once they got turned into feed? (I don't know if they're 100% sure that that's how it spreads, but i think that's what they've decided to go with here in the US.)
What if they just show fewer symptoms?
Granted, the non-organic but anti-growth-hormone folks might like this path (except for me, but i'm a treehugging crazy white chick who has immune and food allergy problems; i have to be careful what i buy in the first place) but i'd like folks to have a lot more time to think about it before it hits the market.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm always interested in human behavior, and I like to watch people in my local Safeway. You might be surprised how many people buy the cheapest generic-brand foods they can, then spend loads on cigarettes and lottery tickets. I wrote a JE [slashdot.org] on it a little while ago.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't have it both ways -- Anti-GM zealots like to say that GM is different than selective breeding because according to them, "genes don't cross species". Yet, when it suits them, the exact
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:3, Interesting)
The very existance of Asda and Iceland, and the continuing popularity of McDonalds and KFC, demonstrates that a significant proportion of the UK food-buying public simply doesn't care what they eat.
Remember, if you want to understand people, ignore what they say and pay attention to what they do.
Re:How long before this gets into the food chain? (Score:3, Informative)
They're actually in there to reduce costs. Antibiotics change the bacterial makeup of the animal's digestive tract so it processes food more efficiently. The animal puts on more weight for a given amount of food.
If anything they make animals more susceptible to infection since the presence of low-levels of antibiotics encourage bacteria to evolve antibiotic-resistance. This is the reason the EU is in the process of removing antibiotics from animal
rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe (Score:5, Funny)
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:Why are Athletic Orginizations so concerned? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why are Athletic Orginizations so concerned? (Score:3, Interesting)
Obligatory SNL transcript... (Score:5, Funny)
Dennis Miller: In response to what its sponsors claim is an idea whose time has come, the first All-Drug Olympics opened today in Bogota, Columbia. Athletes are allowed to take any substance whatsoever before, after, and even during the competition. So far, 115 world records have been shattered! We go now to correspondent Kevin Nealon, live in Bogota for the Weightlifting Finals. Kevin?
Kevin Nealon: Dennis, getting ready to lift now is Sergei Akmudov of the Soviet Union. His trainer has told me that he's taken antibolic steroids, Novacaine, Nyquil, Darvon, and some sort of fish paralyzer. Also, I believe he's had a few cocktails within the last hour or so. All of this is, of course, perfectly legal at the All-Drug Olympics, in fact it's encouraged. Akmudov is getting set now, he's going for a cleaning jerk of over 1500 pounds, which would triple the existing world record. That's an awful lot of weight, Dennis, and here he goes.
[ Kevin steps aside to reveal the steroid-bulked athlete bent over to lift the 1500 lbs. weight. Sergei tightens his grip on the barbells and pulls up, but instead of lifting the weights, his arms are pulled off and blood squirts ferociously out of his pulpy stubs. ]
Kevin Nealon: Oh! He pulled his arms off! He's pulled his arms off, that's gotta be disappointing to the big Russian! [ Sergei's trainer wraps a towel around him ] You know, you hate to see something like this happen, Dennis! He probably doesn't have that much pain right now, but I think tomorrow he's really gonna feel that, Dennis! Back to you!
Dennis Miller: Thank you, Kevin. Very nice form on the Russian. Canada, of course, is leading that competition.
credit [jt.org]
Simple answer: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Simple answer: (Score:5, Interesting)
The real complaint (and the one I'd support for now) is that any gene therapy that will come around soon will be dangerous. Others have mentioned potential downsides of massively increased muscle production, and most potentially enhancing gene therapies would be best expressed through geneline engineering, where a developing embryo is genetically modified. The ethics of that aren't pretty, and its first uses are going to be therapeutic in nature. When it's safe to actually enhance though, there's going to have to be a new look at the old rulebooks banning genetically altered atheletes.
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 prett
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
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.
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:3, Interesting)
> 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
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: (Score:3, Informative)
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
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 comp
Careful... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you increase strength very rapidly without allowing for the corresponding tendons and bone to adapt to the greater muscle mass, you can cause tendon ruptures and stress fractures (already well-known phenomenon in athletes). The body can adapt to all kinds of derangements if you give it enough time, but too much too fast? Bad news. I've seen people come in to the hospital with a hemoglobin level of 5, still walking (slowly) and talking. Now, that's theoretically too low to survive on, but if it happens over a long enough period of time, your body can adapt. If you take a normal person and immediatly bleed them down to a hemoglobin of 5, they'll die.
Plus, if you are turning over too much muscle tissue too fast and don't stay adequately hydrated, you can clog your kidneys and end up in renal failure. This happens periodically when some untrained amateur athelete tries an Ironman without adequate conditioning.
The human body is an amazing machine, but you have to be careful monkeying around with it... athletes may be after performance, but anyone who volunteers to be a guinea pig for this stuff needs his head examined.
Medical Applications (Score:5, Interesting)
Another application might be to solve certain heart related issues. There isn't exactly a huge replacement supply right now.
Probably not what you want (Score:5, Informative)
Marfan's syndrome is a genetic defect in the gene that codes for Fibrillin, a major component of microfibrils in the body's connective tissues. Much of the pathologic consequences are noted in the eye and the aorta... the former location gets dislocations of the lens, and the latter location develops large (fatal if undiagnosed) aortic aneurysms. Marfanoid patients also tend to be tall, and have a lot of laxity in their joints, primarily because of their weakened connective tissues.
If you have weaker connective tissue than normal, it would probably be counterproductive to have greatly increased muscle mass.
I'm not picking on you, just pointing out that it might not be exactly what a Marfan's patient really needs... It might be useful in some kinds of muscular dystrophies, but the most common kinds have defective myofibrils... creating more non-functional muscle wouldn't appear to help them very much.
Hrmm (Score:2)
Re:Hrmm (Score:3, Funny)
Good God, you're right! This proves beyond a doubt that Star Trek is an accurate portrayal of the future, and not just a mere work of fiction.
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Funny)
That is the least of our worries!!! PRAY that your grandchildren will NOT have a neat little inscription behind their right ear that reads.
"DNA Encoded by Microsoft (c)."
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hrmm (Score:2, Informative)
It's Mighty Mouse!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Turtles? (Score:5, Funny)
This is not news (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is not news (Score:3, Informative)
Gene therapy has the potential to provide treatments and possibly even cures for genetic diseases.
Re:This is not news (Score:5, Informative)
PS. it's "genetically modified" not "gene modificated".
Re:This is not news (Score:5, Interesting)
Comedy Rats aside . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
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 eu
Rats with "vaguely Wolverine-like healing factor" (Score:5, Interesting)
It's be interesting to see precisely what applications these advancements are seeing in military use. Sure, it's unlikely that any serious or controversal issue gets used right away by mainstream military, but surely there are special military groups that get "advanced tech" quite, in, er, advance of the main military force.
I heard/read somewhere once that the US military's "high end" technology is 12 years more advanced than anything that is actually available for the mainstream military force, and only used by Special Ops.
Consider how un-advanced things were during the first desert storm compared to how they are now - and jump ahead another years, and think of an equal amount of differential, if not an exponential differential. Wow.
Bad side effects (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at TNG, the advance imune system also kills.
Re:Bad side effects (Score:3, Informative)
Humans aren't rats/mice - nothing against them; my fellow biology majors love them. But if you shove novel genes into a body, kooky things happen - depending on the species and the method. Protocols that work in one animal will not work in another
Also, there are years and years of experience in manipulating mouse genes, and
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.
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:This is going to be a trip! (Score:5, Funny)
Darl McBride is a Russian boxer?
side-effects (Score:2)
Remember when the US government tried to replicate the supersoldier formula during their diabolical plan to force Captain America to retire? Would-be replacement John Walker did become super strong, but he also became super evil. That was a dark day in the history of Captain America. [fremto.com]
Look out, science. You
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.
R.O.U.S.'es? (Score:3, Funny)
Ultimate Super Hero International Team! (Score:5, Funny)
On it will be the daring leader and Weapons Expert, Angle Grinder Man! (Linked to above.) Also...
Aerospace Expert: Lawn Chair Larry! [markbarry.com]
Science and Technology Expert: Troy Hurtubise, inventor of the famous Bear Proof Suit! [newscientist.com] (Tested by real bikers! And bears! It's bear and biker proof!)
Matter Eating Expert: Sonya Thomas, the Black Widow! [ifoce.com]
Sneaking Across the Country Naked Expert: Steven Gough! [bbc.co.uk]
With these mighty heroes, the Ultimate Super Hero International Team, the Universe shall be Saved!
SoupIsGood Food
This has already been done. (Score:2)
He is Ben, [imdb.com] King of Rats" [coldfusionvideo.com]
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.
Long-Term Low Gravity (Score:5, Interesting)
Muscle loss vs Bone loss (Score:3, Informative)
Gene Therapy Schmene Therapy (Score:2, Funny)
What are the athletes and trainers thinking ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Douglas Adams was right (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Cue new series.. X-Animaniacs? (Score:5, Funny)
'That's Magneto, damn you! And we do the same thing we do ever night, Pinky.. try to take over the world with our rodent superpowers! And how many times do I have to tell you? Stop licking off that blue body paint!'
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.
Related military research (Score:3, Interesting)
"The vision for the Metabolic Dominance Program is to develop novel strategies that exploit and control the mechanisms of energy production, metabolism, and utilization during short periods of deployment requiring unprecedented levels of physical demand. The ultimate goal is to enable superior physical and physiological performance by controlling energy metabolism on demand. An example is continuous peak physical performance and cognitive function for 3 to 5 days, 24 hours per day, without the need for calories."
the Wired Article:. html?tw=wn_tophead_1
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62297,00
the DARPA announcement:d 2.htm
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/solicitations/baa03-02mo
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Natural born? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Natural born? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is Great! (Score:2)
of course.
Re:New Steroids (Score:3, Funny)
Live Easy And Read News To Ossify Slowly, People. Eliza Lives and Learns. Retsearch, indeed...
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.
Re:One "redundant" down-mod already (Score:2)
if only the irony wasn't lost on you.
Then you say:
(at least in the page layout, didn't check the times)
Well done! Perhaps you should have?
Re:One question not adressed by the article. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:pfft.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Clamping is villainous :-) Considering the hassle and expense of getting a clamp removed, I consider it harassment. In fact, it's meant to be harassment. As such, it is a punishment that far exceeds the seriousness of the crime. If you park without paying, you should get a ticket. If you park where you're in the way, your car should be towed... not to annoy you, but to get rid of the car.
Angle-grinder man's methods may not be the right way to get things c