A place for the discussion of all things not closely related to the sport and its competitive side. (Locked down several times a year during the major championships)
Marlow wrote:If gene-doping is so sci-fi why is WADA spending time and effort in ways to detect it.
WADA's ignorance (or bluster) and easy money for the experts. WADA's throwing around $8 million a year and the experts get lots of publicity too. You think they are going to turn it down or tell WADA to spend it on something else?
Based on my understanding of the human animal, its deceit, greed, and imagination, I'm going on record that we WILL have a proven case of successful athletic genetic engineering in the next 15 years. Apropos of nothing, there will also be a successful human clone created in the same time frame, ethics laws notwithstanding.
Marlow wrote:Based on my understanding of the human animal, its deceit, greed, and imagination, I'm going on record that we WILL have a proven case of successful athletic genetic engineering in the next 15 years.
If you are right, and I have no reason to doubt that you are, then someone should be doing something about it now. WADA is probably the only organization in the world that is in a position to at least try. I wouldn't discourage them.
Marlow wrote:Based on my understanding of the human animal, its deceit, greed, and imagination, I'm going on record that we WILL have a proven case of successful athletic genetic engineering in the next 15 years.
If you are right, and I have no reason to doubt that you are, then someone should be doing something about it now. WADA is probably the only organization in the world that is in a position to at least try. I wouldn't discourage them.
Yes, but I'm just a silly paranoid layman. The scientists and doctors among us say it ain't gonna happen . . . ever.
Marlow wrote:Genetic manipulation IS going to happen (it's already started on a rudimentary level), and yes, there's going to be mistakes along the way, but sooner or later (my WAG is in 25 years) medicine will begin 'curing' people by manipulating their genes, not just dosing them with meds. When that happens, athletes will be right there in line for 'treatment'. It is inevitable.
the article wrote:How fast will man eventually run? Will he ever run the 100 meters in five seconds flat? "Not impossible," says one of the world's best known authorities on physiology and biomechanics. Professor Peter Weyand
With all due respect to the esteemed professor, this is utter nonsense.
the article wrote:How fast will man eventually run? Will he ever run the 100 meters in five seconds flat? "Not impossible," says one of the world's best known authorities on physiology and biomechanics. Professor Peter Weyand
With all due respect to the esteemed professor, this is utter nonsense.
the article wrote:How fast will man eventually run? Will he ever run the 100 meters in five seconds flat? "Not impossible," says one of the world's best known authorities on physiology and biomechanics. Professor Peter Weyand
With all due respect to the esteemed professor, this is utter nonsense.
Yup!
The learning curve on genetic manipulation is on the steepest rise it's ever been. It is so unreasonable to project a mere 500, 1000, 2000 years in the future and see where we'll be then? Are we not almost now at the point when science can change the body's physiology? Extrapolate!
Marlow wrote:The learning curve on genetic manipulation is on the steepest rise it's ever been. It is so unreasonable to project a mere 500, 1000, 2000 years in the future and see where we'll be then? Are we not almost now at the point when science can change the body's physiology? Extrapolate!
Yes, but if I also extrapolate the political and economic developments of the last decade, I can as easily envision a barren planet devoid of human life, or one in which life resembles what it was in the Dark Ages, as I can a guy running the 100 in 5 seconds.
Marlow wrote:The learning curve on genetic manipulation is on the steepest rise it's ever been. It is so unreasonable to project a mere 500, 1000, 2000 years in the future and see where we'll be then? Are we not almost now at the point when science can change the body's physiology? Extrapolate!
Yes, but if I also extrapolate the political and economic developments of the last decade, I can as easily envision a barren planet devoid of human life, or one in which life resembles what it was in the Dark Ages, as I can a guy running the 100 in 5 seconds.
Indeed, and in a parallel universe that WILL happen! [see multiverse discussion]
Friend Marlow, I suspect that if you introduce into your spiel the notion that man will run 100m in 5 seconds, you will instantly lose credibiity.. stick to the nano-babble.
lonewolf wrote:Friend Marlow, I suspect that if you introduce into your spiel the notion that man will run 100m in 5 seconds, you will instantly lose credibiity.. stick to the nano-babble.
Are they not part and parcel of the same Brave New World of mine? An Emily Dickinson poem is apropos here:
Much Madness is divinest Sense - To a discerning Eye - Much Sense - the starkest Madness - ’Tis the Majority In this, as all, prevail - Assent - and you are sane - Demur - you’re straightway dangerous - And handled with a Chain -
lonewolf wrote:Friend Marlow, I suspect that if you introduce into your spiel the notion that man will run 100m in 5 seconds, you will instantly lose credibiity.. stick to the nano-babble.
Are they not part and parcel of the same Brave New World of mine? An Emily Dickinson poem is apropos here:
Much Madness is divinest Sense - To a discerning Eye - Much Sense - the starkest Madness - ’Tis the Majority In this, as all, prevail - Assent - and you are sane - Demur - you’re straightway dangerous - And handled with a Chain -
You are lucky. Lonewolf, tandfman and I still love you.
the article wrote:How fast will man eventually run? Will he ever run the 100 meters in five seconds flat? "Not impossible," says one of the world's best known authorities on physiology and biomechanics. Professor Peter Weyand
With all due respect to the esteemed professor, this is utter nonsense.
But it's great publicity for his research. It seems that no one gets burned for ludicrous comments anymore.
Nevermind all this hypothetical 5 second 100m crap. From the LA Times today:
Researchers in Japan say they used mouse stem cells to create eggs and sperm, producing healthy offspring.
HOLY BUCKETS... this is legit Brave New World stuff. We are just a generation or two away from producing hybridized sprinters who really can run 5 second 100 meters. That is, barring the economic and social collapse of the civilized world which seems ever more imminent.
Anthony Treacher wrote:Sorry. Too much trouble these days.
And so imprecise. Millions of swimmers, trying to get to the prize, creating millions of permutations in offspring. It's so much easier to just manipulate the chromosomes into exactly what you want!
Marlow wrote:It's so much easier to just manipulate the chromosomes into exactly what you want!
I think you mean it's more efficient to genotype the embryos and only implant the ones you want. And we are at that point right now except we don't know the consequences of all the polymorphisms, just the major ones. So you probably won't get what you hope for with respect to your goal of a super athlete. But at least your child won't have cystic fibrosis and you'll know the sex.
lonewolf wrote:How do you identify the "super sperm"?..and the "super egg"?
That is the question. Although, you'd actually be genotyping the zygote, the result of fertilization.
Nobody knows the combination of genetic alleles that are THE ones you want.
Pego wrote:
Daisy wrote:at least your child won't have cystic fibrosis
Perhaps.
Right, no guarantees with the epigenetic landscape complicating the genotype to phenotype equation. And there could always be denovo mutations not identified in the original genotyping.
And who knows what having the embryo manipulated in a petri dish could do? I guess the IVF babies are turing out to be 'normal'?
Last edited by Daisy on Fri Oct 05, 2012 6:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
lonewolf wrote:So far, I have (recently) flunked toe dragging, space, super colliders and fertilization.. what else ya got?
How can fossil sea shells exist in the mountains?
Actually, I do have a real question that I think you might have thought about. How do the magnetic poles switch and what are the consequences of this when it happens? If any?
lonewolf wrote:So far, I have (recently) flunked toe dragging, space, super colliders and fertilization.. what else ya got?
How can fossil sea shells exist in the mountains?
Actually, I do have a real question that I think you might have thought about. How do the magnetic poles switch and what are the consequences of this when it happens? If any?
Sea shells in the mountains are easy...pole reversal not so easy.. I don't think it happens in an instant.
My younger daughter's Masters thesis in Geophysics included a study tracking the migration of the North Pole through magnetic orientation of thin slices of rocks of varying ages.
Over the past few billion years the North Pole has done a figure 8 in the Pacific Ocean and returned to its present position near the oldest know original position. Presumably the South Pole was meandering in corresponding fashion..
I presume, had it kept going south, the polar regions would have migrated covering presently temperate zones until the poles were reversed.. of course, the continents would have been continously changing simultaneously.
The Earth and the Universe are not locked in place...While the geological history of Earth has been the focus and basis of my education and career, I am content to observe it for the century or so I am around and then hand off to someone else..
The only thing stopping Earth having a lifeless environment like Mars is the magnetic field that shields us from deadly solar radiation and helps some animals migrate, and it may be a lot more fragile and febrile than one might think. Scientists say earth's magnetic field is weakening and could all but disappear in as little as 500 years as a precursor to flipping upside down. It has happened before - the geological record suggests the magnetic field has reversed every 250,000 years, meaning that, with the last event 800,000 years ago, another would seem to be overdue. "Magnetic north has migrated more than 1,500 kilometres over the past century," said Conall Mac Niocaill, an earth scientist at Oxford University. "In the past 150 years, the strength of the magnetic field has lessened by 10 percent, which could indicate a reversal is on the cards." While the effects are hard to predict, the consequences may be enormous. The loss of the magnetic field on Mars billions of years ago put paid to life on the planet if there ever was any, scientists say. Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/technology
