How to Grow a Super Athlete

I found this NY Times Article very interesting and applicable to our eugenics discussions in class.

First though, if you remember back to the movie Gattaca, recall the scene with the geneticist and how the parents at first desire only basic improvements in their child, such as precluding heart disease, etc. However, with the persuasion of the geneticist, they agree to many other measures, including preventing any aggressive predilections, etc. -- they no longer want to leave anything to "chance." Instead, they wish to provide their child with the best and most favorable innate conditions.

I now want to compare this scene with the topic of this article. According to recent research, all of the actions we produce arise from the myelination of our neuronal axons. This myelin serves to insulate the neurons, but more importantly speeds up the signals proceeding down this pathway. As certain neuronal pathways are used more often, oligodendrocyte cells produce more myelin around these axons, making the communication more efficient and faster. The best time to grow such myelin though is at any early age, as there is a critical window at which our bodies will be most efficient and productive in adding myelin onto the pathways (birth - 12 years of age approx). If we were to learn a new task and practice it obsessively at an older age, we could never grow the same amount of myelin that we could have if were to have taken up this task at an earlier age.

The article analyzes the lives of elite athletes and finds that many comes from concentrated areas of the world. Specifically, the article considers the Russian tennis stars, many of whom attended the Spartak Tennis Club in Russia. This club accepts kids at a very early age and hones their technique and skill. Many of these kids become amazing by the age of 10 and really start to shine on national and international levels by ages 16-18.

The point that I am trying to illuminate here is that such a system where children are expected to devote extraordinary amounts of time on practicing certain sports is just one more step closer to changing one's genetics as to start superior. Us "normal" kids never went to these types of clubs/programs, and thus by age 10 we had already missed the critical window and for all practical reasons are deemed inferior, since no matter how much time we devoted to the sport we probably would never catch up the other kids.

Is it ethical to start kids at such an early age, before they may even really know what they wish to devote their lives to? Aren't parents achieving similar effects to that in Gattaca--whether they alter the child's genetics or they alter the amount of myelin in early childhood--although in a much less extreme manner.

In a world growing more competitive every year, parents will naturally be pushed towards making sure their child has the best possible start. Although at the current time many might say that there is no way that we would start altering the genes of those born to make sure they have no innate heart conditions, etc. I feel that such an idea is not as far as some may think. As manifested through this article, already there currently exists a present day method analogous (again in a less extreme fashion) to altering genes.