Gene Therapy Creates Strong Super-Rats

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.)

Comments

How long before this gets into the food chain?

[mapnjd]

With the rise-and-rise of agribusiness and the permanent pressure they place on our governments, how long before such genetic modifications are made to cows, pigs, etc.?

Re:How long before this gets into the food chain?

[fruey]

This could already be happening. Growth hormones, vitamin supplements, antibiotics in food all the time, to reduce infection.

Just where do you draw the line?

Re:How long before this gets into the food chain?

[sql*kitten]

Just where do you draw the line?

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?

[mongbot]

Cattle and poultry are given vital human antibiotics by agribusiness, just in order to allow animals to grow slightly faster. This means that bacteria have a far greater chance to grow resistant to the antibiotics. There have been many reported cases of people becoming infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria after they have eaten meat raised with antibiotics, (in particular, VRE).

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?

[sql*kitten]

Yes the anti-GM at all costs people are small and vocal but the "please label what I'm about to eat crowd" are pretty mainstream.

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:How long before this gets into the food chain?

[hey!]

The majority of consumers just want vast amounts of cheap food and aren't too bothered how or where it comes from.

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.

Why are Athletic Orginizations so concerned?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that the concern with steroids was that they posed long-term health risks... not that they made people stronger. The concept of limiting strength to those with naturally good genes is quite elitist.

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?

[TGK]

It frightens me that the fundamental rational for the Eugenics Laws of the industrial revolution is met with a "+3 Insightful" modifier here.

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?

[rollingcalf]

The concern is that steroids BOTH make people stronger AND are health risks. What they are trying to avoid is a situation that practically requires one to sacrifice one's health to be a champion.

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?

[Gulthek]

Oh. My. God. Is it evil or ignorance, ladies and gentlemen? Surely, surely we hope that it is the latter, but unfortunately there are those of us (like Mister Moron here) that would argue that it doesn't matter! Ha! Sit down sir, class is in session. Setting aside your silly preoccupationi with IQ, your odd view of taxes as an investment, and your laughable racial beliefs; let's examine evolution and genetics.

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.

Bad side effects

[www.sorehands.com]

I see the potentional for bad side effects. If you increase the immune system, you get allergies and arthritis. If you increase the cellular regenation, you have cancer.

Look at TNG, the advance imune system also kills.

This is going to be a trip!

[Sleeper]

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.

Drugs in sport

[Zog The Undeniable]

Two days after Marco Pantani's death was announced, this is not a good thing for sport. The exact cause of Pantani's death has not yet been determined, but what is known is that he was depressed and being treated for drug addiction after being hounded for years over doping allegations. Unfortunately new "treatments" appear all the time and techniques to detect them are usually slow to catch up or ineffective (the EPO test involves measuring haemocrit levels in the blood, which can easily give false positives). Most professional cyclists are probably on something or other, and there are many who will leap at the chance to use another, as yet undetectable, performance boosting substance.

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

[The Tyro]

There exist entire categories of diseases based entirely on immune system problems.

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.

Steroid Psychosis

[The Tyro]

is a real phenomenon... I've seen people go truly bonkers from high-dose steroids.

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.

Level playing field, sort of

[sam_handelman]

I'm a computational biologist.

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.