Reviewing David Epstein’s new book The Sports Gene, Reeves Wiedeman explores the idea of breeding superstar athletes:
The technology is on the not-too-distant horizon: scientists have produced fertile eggs from mouse stem cells, allowing for the possibility that, one day soon, humans will be able to engineer their children to receive specific traits and not others. Give him my wingspan, but not the vertical leap. The big hope for these technologies is that they will help deal with debilitating diseases, but big-money sports are inevitably going to get involved. …
There are, by Epstein’s count, around a hundred thousand “naturally fit” Americans between the ages of twenty and sixty-five—those whose genetic makeups predispose them to being in shape. The book is rife with such genetic advantages that find their ways into different populations. Members of a particular ethnic group in Kenya, in addition to living at altitude, have thinner legs, which makes the pendulum effect necessary for distance running that much easier to create. An outsized number of Jamaicans from Trelawny, a region in the island’s northwest, have become world-champion sprinters. Redheads from everywhere tend to have greater tolerance for physical pain.
But the disappointing reality Epstein most often presents is that there are no answers, or at least not definitive ones, to the questions of what genetic traits will guarantee athletic success, or whether training can truly overcome inborn limitations. Take ACTN3, a gene that allows for the production of alpha-actinin-3, a protein found in the fast-twitch muscles of almost every top sprinter who has ever been tested for the gene. But a properly functioning ACTN3 is not a golden ticket, merely a prerequisite for entry.
The Dish 