Storyline: Why not redesign athletes to fit games, like football? We’ve been doing that for a long time–to a degree. Now may be the time to go “all in.” But should we?
You’ve probably heard the term, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). GMOs are plants and animals created through biotechnology, namely, gene-splicing.
Courtesy: extremetech.com
Take something from here. Combine it with something from there. Viola! You have a GMO — as in a bigger, juicier strawberry, a more drought-resistant bean, or a faster-growing fish.
Might we do the same with athletes? We could build a science-modified athlete — a player that’s bigger, faster, stronger, and less injury-prone. Injuries would heal in far less time.
With science, you see, we could fit athletes and athletic performance to the games we play and love to watch, like football.
Let’s face it: players are at risk. They face CTE and a range of other physical and medical challenges during and after their athletic careers.
How about creating Genetically Modified Athletes? Bionic Players?
Crazy, you say? Perhaps.
But, if true, what’s the gist? For one thing it will turn on it’s head today’s debate about Performance-Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). Tomorrow’s athletes won’t be taking drugs to enhance performance only; they’ll be enhanced.
That possibility is a theme in a new report about the future of sports, circa 2040. The report was commissioned by Delaware North, a diversified, sports-related corportation.*
Courtesy: humanitas.org
The Delaware North report isn’t saying any of this will happen. Report authors speculate about what could happen. They base conclusions on interviews with futurists, sports experts, and scientists. What were some of the speculative conclusions?
–Athletes will use artificial body parts, replacing injured, worn out, or broken body parts.
-Putty will help fractures heal in days.
-And genetic enhancements will be used to prevent and hasten a return from injury.
If all of this comes to pass in sports, athletic competition may need to be segregated. How so? The report authors speculate that appreciably modified athletes will compete in different leagues from those who are more “naturally developed.”
But let’s face it: there’s more than science in this equation of the future. Politics and preferences weigh mightily, too.
And that observation reminds me of an experience I had a number of years ago–in agriculture, not in sports. It’s the story of how the natural world and science intersected—collided might be a better word—and what changed as a result. There’s a lesson for tomorrow’s sports in what happened in agriculture back then.
Courtesy: 123rf.com
The timeframe is the ‘70s and I was finishing up my doctoral work at the time. A university research administrator had taken me under his wing. One day he invited me to his office.
“Close the door,” he said after I walked in. He walked behind his desk, reached into a drawer, and pulled out a brown paper bag with something inside. I started to sweat, thinking it was porn.
And it was porn, sort of….
A book was in the bag, a critique of agricultural research being done at schools like ours. It was his role to promote, not critique, so he didn’t want others to know that he owned or had read the book. He wanted me to read it, though. Then I was to return it directly to him, not to his secretary. It would be our secret.
“There are lessons in this report,” he declared. “This is where the field is going. You’ll face situations like this in your career. You’ll need to be prepared,” he asserted.
He was right.
One of the vignettes in the book was about tomatoes and tomato-pickers. A university had designed a new machine to pick tomatoes. I thought the prominent issue would be a machine replacing farmworkers. It wasn’t. The story was about a different kind of choice-making.
Courtesy: transactionbook.com
The machine didn’t do a very good job of doing what it was designed to do–pick tomatoes. Unreliable, it mangled some, crushed some others. So, at issue, was what to do? An obvious choice was redesigning the machine. But there was another option: redesigning the tomato, making it harder, easier to pick mechanically.
Science, you see, could do both–redesign the machine and redesign the tomato. The choice: redesign the tomato.
The book in the brown paper bag was Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times (1978), authored by Jim Hightower. Hightower made me think differently about science. Up to that point I just assumed that science was always good; science always meant progress; and universities (especially public schools) always did the right thing, in the right way. Universities were above reproach.
Today I know that there are limits to science. And I realize that different people use science–or deny science–sometimes as a means to support, if not achieve, partisan objectives.
We need science in sports, of course. It brings advancements in nutrition protocols, better testing, and new surgical techniques, among other things, all of which serve the athletic good. But, as my story about tomatoes reveals, there are ethical dilemmas associated with the application of science. At issue is grappling with those dilemmas, to make the “right” choice. The default is to take a laissez-faire, anything goes, approach.
Think about what we’re facing today in sports.
#1: There are many sports injuries, some serious (e.g., sub-concussions and concussions that can lead to CTE). There are knee, shoulder, back, foot and other injuries that hamper play. Injuries produce missing or shortened seasons for players, abbreviated playing careers and, sometimes, suffering by players in later life.
#2: Marginal safety improvements are possible through helmet redesign and other equipment improvements. And injury risk is related to players’ size and athletic capacity. More and more players are honed to play: they are big or strong or fast … often all three. The force of hits are hard with physical impact.
#3: We love our games. And we love those games just the way they are. The idea of re-designing games to make them safer (as in tackle-free football) isn’t taking hold. The thought of replacing games (soccer rather than football) isn’t being met with enthusiasm.
S0, given all of that, why not improve the athlete through science? We’ve been doing that for a long time–a step at a time. Now may be the time to take that big leap, to go “all in.” We could do that with science.
Courtesy: inspirably.com
But here’s the thing: even if we can, that doesn’t mean we should. Just because we can develop GMOs … redesign a tomato … create GMAs (Genetically Modified Athletes) … …Should we?
It’s an important question.
Well, in revenue-based sports, not so much.
In that domain the conversation is mostly about markets and money—expanding the first, making more of the second. It’s about the business of sports–making it bigger, more profitable, and more irresistible to fans. That’s what general managers are hired to do. It’s what sports owners want.
Protect “the cow. Milk the cow. Milk it for all it’s worth.
And will athletes be the big winner if the future plays out in the way Delaware North projects? Perhaps. But it’s difficult to conclude that the term–“athlete”–would have the same meaning that it has today.
A big winner will be corporate sports, including “corporatized sports,” that is, amateur sports (aka major-college athletics) that mimic the corporate brand of athletics. How great it would be to be able to put athletes on the field with a high prospect of keeping them there (e.g., injury reductions). How great it would be to see a reduction in injury protocol, regulations, and law suits (e.g., re CTE) for injuries suffered on fields of play.
The big winner will be the fans. But, if Delaware North’s predictions hold true, there will be differential wins. Why? With ticket price hikes, many middle-class fans will be squeezed out of the in-person market. There’s nothing new there: game access, once more extensive, is restricted today due to cost, including in corporatized sports.
Delaware North paints this picture of how different fans will participate:
-10% will attend games in person–most of whom will be top income-earners. To attend, fans will pay (on average) between $700-$1000 per contest.
-40% will watch games at “a third venue,” that is, a corporate location loaded with high-technology and related services (e.g., wagering) to enhance the fan experience.
-50% of fans will watch games at home.
What’s it all mean? It could be an entirely different “Field of Dreams.”
Ah, science. What a great tool it is.
Tool for what? Tool for whom?
________________________________
*The report commissioned by Delaware North is available here. A USAToday article on the report is available here.
