EMBRYO, EMBROYO! WHEREFORE ART THOU EMBRYO?

 

Imagine a world where Yale, Harvard, Colgate, Brown, MIT and Oberlin are regular BCS participants. 

Imagine a world where the Final Four consists of Yale, Harvard, Colgate and Brown.

Imagine a world where the Duke Lacrosse team wins a national championship each year and the gene for aggressive behavior towards exotic dancers has been removed, or at a minimum, a gene making them more believable to law enforcement is inserted.

Genetic engineering has progressed from the imagination of science-fiction writers to becoming scientific reality.  

Steroids, prior to becoming a reality, was first imagined by both chemists and cartoonists. The thought of a drug's ability to create supermen has moved from fake heroes created on comic-book pages, to chemists making and selling the drug to create fake comic sports heroes.

Steroids may soon become the jealous ancestor of technology developed to create "designer babies" by enhancing genetic makeup before birth.

The idea of creating "designer babies" is no longer a pencil-sketch; it is published science, and these "designer babies" may be coming to schoolyards and ball fields and basketball courts very soon.

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which oversees tests involving human embryos in Britain, ruled last week that fertility clinics may screen out human embryos carrying genes that raise the risk of certain adulthood cancers.  Those in favor of the move view it as a needed step in preventing human suffering, while critics view it as the first step in the age of handpicking babies.

The British Medical Association embraced the decision "to extend the criteria for embryo selection." The Association's chief of ethics and science, Vivienne Nathanson, calmed critics by stating:

"We do not see that today's decision is moving towards 'designer babies.'  There is a world of difference between a parent not wanting their child to develop breast cancer and someone wanting a child with blue eyes and blond hair."

Nathanson provided the Aryan physical description without an irony addendum.

The Authority stopped short at selecting embryos with genetic markers for eczema and asthma - because they are treatable- and for schizophrenia, a condition without a single gene of causation.

In a foreseeable future, a society of breast healthy, cancer-free, wheezing, scratching people debating politics with imaginary friends is a distinct possibility. In a future a little fuzzier, once genes for various items such as height, obesity, personality, IQ, physical makeup and others are identified and found to be adjustable in a lab, parents will be ordering up offspring as if in a Chinese restaurant:

"I'll take blonde hair, blue eyes, no cancer, no mental illness, no teenage rebellion, a height gene, a big-bone gene, the speed gene, the vertical leap gene, the strength gene, add 75 IQ points, an outgoing comedy gene, and throw in some personal responsibility as well."

Altering a human being prior to birth would be cost prohibitive for the masses, but an elite few - an elite few who want to cheer a son scoring 15 goals at a peewee soccer game and then change to a suit and tie in the car to win the national spelling bee, and then later that evening play cello for the Boston Pops Orchestra - will be able to afford a procedure or set of procedures to make this a reality. 

There is an absolute truth about the human being and science is finding the proof.

Nature is an absolute, a fact, and with each scientific discovery concerning genetics, personal experience and environment as dominant factors in human achievement is nothing more than anecdotal dialogue.

Studies indicate two different children can be raised identically in the same household and become vastly different people; and, two nearly identical people can be raised in vastly different households and become almost identical people.

For example, a two-parent family can raise children adhering strictly to the teachings of Dr. Spock and one of the kids may grow up to be a responsible, well-adjusted kid, while the other may dress up like Spock from Star Trek and abuse stray animals in the neighborhood.  Identical twins, separated at birth, and raised in different environs, tend to be indistinguishable people as adults with the same interests, personalities and talents.

Genetics as final destiny is a fallacy, but genetics as a road map is undeniable. Environment can merely prescribe road choice, it cannot determine the pace or make of the vehicle or the distance it will cover.  Our society fears science revealing biological factors over environmental factors, because it removes us as our own ultimate path maker.

Behaviorists point to various studies to improve the argument we can be anything we want to be if we just stick to it and work hard.  John Watson, an American Psychologist, believed he could take any healthy child in his controlled environment and make the child into anything he wanted to make him be regardless of talent, intelligence, tendencies and abilities.  His theory, when viewed through the eyes of modern science, is laughably improbable.  But maybe, had he lived long enough, Watson could have trained, for instance, the hyper-aggressive Charles Manson to be the featherweight champion of the world instead of a serial killer, or trained a Palestinian child seasoned in rock throwing at Israeli tanks to be a major league baseball pitcher. 

B.F. Skinner believed the human could be conditioned to do anything.  He pointed to studies where he taught pigeons how to dance and play tennis.  That's an interesting experiment as circus sideshow, but he never studied or explained differences in ability levels amongst his tennis playing and dancing pigeons.  Any human being can learn how to dance or play tennis or play basketball or baseball or football.  The gist is that certain people do things much better than others, and not that they simply can do them at all.    

Denying genetic truths for environmental dominant theories is understandable.  It is the way we control our lives and the lives of our children. We want to believe we can do and be anything we want to be. Our society is founded on this belief.  Our system of law, politics and education is founded on this belief, and western religion is wholly dependant on this belief. 

This belief - held by millions of parents - at its tamest, is simply egotistical; and, at worst is a reckless ambition aimed at their children causing lifelong trauma for both child and parent.  This belief has led to athletic performance and enhancement centers for children beginning as early as two years of age.  These centers can make the slow and weak a tad faster and a tad stronger; the average guy a little above average; the above average very good; the very good great; the great elite. But, parents are shoving their kids into these enhancement programs with a false dream their kid will be a professional athlete, when they are better suited for CPAing, or constructing homes, or as career counselors.  

Talent and genius is not manufactured, it is born, and is merely nudged by environment.

We think we can be a John Elway if we put in the time and the effort. 

We think we can be a Michael Jordan if we put in the time and the effort.

We think we can be an Alex Rodriguez if we put in the time and the effort.

We tell ourselves these things as kids, and when we fail, we owe the failings to disadvantageous training, to bad coaching, to the wrong school district, to uncomfortable shoes, to bad teammates, and many other excuses.  Some of these environmental excuses may apply, but science is telling us through continuing genetic advances that our failings in athletics happen well before we even step on a field a diamond or a court.

But science may be coming to the rescue of the athletically challenged very soon, if the critics of the British Medical Association are also prophets.

Imagine an all Ivy League Final Four.

Imagine a BCS where the players are also responsible for creating the computer analysis determining the teams.

Imagine professional leagues comprised solely of the genetically enhanced.

Imagine this could never happen?

Imagine it already has.