Morphing the human body

Morphing the human body(2000, Jan 20) ESPN, by T. Farrey [link]

This article begins with the intriguingly benal question about whether it would be interesting to clone an athlete. Presumably, this question has more meaning in sport, at least because there seems some meaningful and (more) obvious connection between the career of an athlete and their genes. In contrast, wondering whether it would be valuable to clone, say, John Lennon, would be uninteresting just because the link between musical capcity and genetics is less persuasive.

One of the other interesting aspects of this article is the contextualising genetics in a broader technologisation of sport, which includes developments in cybernetics. the bionic athlete is described more through these technologies than genetics. Indeed, this is useful to note since it is more persuasive that, if any Frankensteian being should become manifest through technology, then it is much less likely that it will be through genetics. Rather, it will be through the cosmetic sculpting of our bodies that will produce distorted humans, but all for the better I think. As a species, we lack the necessary level of diversity that would make difference seem unimportant in terms of how we evaluate each other.