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Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Would you test your child’s genes for athletic ability?
Would little Johnny make a better runner or weight lifter? A company claims its gene test can tell you.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The New York Times reports that a company out of Boulder, Colo., will now test your child’s DNA for a specific gene that it says can help predict your child’s natural athletic abilities. Here’s the full story.
Times writer Juliet Macur reports: “In health-conscious, sports-oriented Boulder, Atlas Sports Genetics is playing into the obsessions of parents by offering a $149 test that aims to predict a child’s natural athletic strengths. The process is simple. Swab inside the child’s cheek and along the gums to collect DNA and return it to a lab for analysis of ACTN3, one gene among more than 20,000 in the human genome.”
“The test’s goal is to determine whether a person would be best at speed and power sports like sprinting or football, or endurance sports like distance running, or a combination of the two. A 2003 study discovered the link between ACTN3 and those athletic abilities.”
“In this era of genetic testing, DNA is being analyzed to determine predispositions to disease, but experts raise serious questions about marketing it as a first step in finding a child’s sports niche, which some parents consider the road to a college scholarship or a career as a professional athlete.”
“Atlas executives acknowledge that their test has limitations but say that it could provide guidelines for placing youngsters in sports. The company is focused on testing children from infancy to about 8 years old because physical tests to gauge future sports performance at that age are, at best, unreliable. …”
“Dr. Stephen M. Roth, director of the functional genomics laboratory at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health who has studied ACTN3, said he thought the test would become popular. But he had reservations.”
“ ‘The idea that it will be one or two genes that are contributing to the Michael Phelpses or the Usain Bolts of the world I think is shortsighted because it’s much more complex than that,’ he said, adding that athletic performance has been found to be affected by at least 200 genes.”
I try to not pass judgment on stuff until you guys get a chance to comment, but this story really bothers me.
I am a huge believer in letting kids try to a bunch of different things and see what they like and where they excel. I am not a big fan of the predestined to do anything. Who knows where the world will lead you and where you will develop a talent? Who knows who or what will influence the person your child becomes? I can’t imagine, even if they developed a 100-percent accurate test, telling a child at a young age “Your genes say you’ll be good at X so you’re doing that.”
The article gives an example of a Spanish long jumper who didn’t have the gene variant that should have indicated his success yet, he is an Olympic athlete. The article goes on to say that environment, training, nutrition and luck also contributes to an athlete’s successful performance.
What do you think? Would you or your husband be interested in having your children’s genes tested for athletic abilities? (The price isn’t that high, and the test isn’t painful.) What would you do with the results of the test? Would you only allow them to do the sports the gene test indicated success in?
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