Good morning all my faithful readers, I'm just sitting around at home enjoying my bright and quiet Sunday morning and plotting all the things that need to get done between tomorrow and Wednesday--it's getting to be a lot of stuff, so I believe that I'll need to make a list!
Anyhow, I was surfing MSN this morning and came up with an interesting article about a real live German Superboy. Apparently, the kid was born to a relatively muscular mother (she was a professional sprinter) and has a heritage of very strong relatives on both sides. Well, the kid is not even 4-years-old as yet and he's already capable of lifting and holding 7-pound weights with arms extended (something even regular adults have difficulty doing) and he has twice the muscle mass and half the bodyfat of most kids. Well, it turns out that the kid has a genetic mutation that causes his body not to produce a protein known as Myostatin that has been shown to limit muscle growth.
Now, as you probably figured already, scientists are finding ways to exploit this thing and I believe that it coud be useful for people who have diesases such as muscular dystrophy or who lose muscle mass because of debilitating accidents, illness and so on. While I do agree with doing research on this thing to help those cases, I do not agree with the idea of professional athletes using this type of technology to increase their own physical abilities, I think it's just completely wrong! Athletes are already strong, why would they want to become super strong? It just doesn't make sense! I'm also a bit hesitant to debate about whether or not it should be used to slow the muscle loss experienced as we grow older. In a way, I'd like to think that there is a reason for us to grow old and prolonging the aging process would somehow throw our ecological system off balance...but as a human, I have to say that it doesn't please me very much to think about the prospect of dying, therefore I have to remain neutral on the subject. One thing I will say though is that, while I'm not a doctor and have no clue what Myostatin does for the body, I'd like to believe that it has some purpose and to inhibit it would cause some sort of physical problems later on. Besides, the kid is only 4.5 years old and there is no way to see the long-term results of the body not producing Myostatin.
{arf,arf}
Anyhow, I was surfing MSN this morning and came up with an interesting article about a real live German Superboy. Apparently, the kid was born to a relatively muscular mother (she was a professional sprinter) and has a heritage of very strong relatives on both sides. Well, the kid is not even 4-years-old as yet and he's already capable of lifting and holding 7-pound weights with arms extended (something even regular adults have difficulty doing) and he has twice the muscle mass and half the bodyfat of most kids. Well, it turns out that the kid has a genetic mutation that causes his body not to produce a protein known as Myostatin that has been shown to limit muscle growth.
Now, as you probably figured already, scientists are finding ways to exploit this thing and I believe that it coud be useful for people who have diesases such as muscular dystrophy or who lose muscle mass because of debilitating accidents, illness and so on. While I do agree with doing research on this thing to help those cases, I do not agree with the idea of professional athletes using this type of technology to increase their own physical abilities, I think it's just completely wrong! Athletes are already strong, why would they want to become super strong? It just doesn't make sense! I'm also a bit hesitant to debate about whether or not it should be used to slow the muscle loss experienced as we grow older. In a way, I'd like to think that there is a reason for us to grow old and prolonging the aging process would somehow throw our ecological system off balance...but as a human, I have to say that it doesn't please me very much to think about the prospect of dying, therefore I have to remain neutral on the subject. One thing I will say though is that, while I'm not a doctor and have no clue what Myostatin does for the body, I'd like to believe that it has some purpose and to inhibit it would cause some sort of physical problems later on. Besides, the kid is only 4.5 years old and there is no way to see the long-term results of the body not producing Myostatin.
{arf,arf}
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