genomeboy.com

The New York Times:

Twenty-one college football players have collapsed and died as a result of training over the past decade. At least eight were carriers of the sickle-cell trait, a genetic disorder that can unpredictably turn deadly during rigorous exercise.

***

Dr. M. A. Bender, the director of the Odessa Brown Comprehensive Sickle Cell Clinic in Seattle, said scant research had been done on the connection between exercise and the sickle-cell trait.

“There isn’t the data in terms of how often it occurs, what the real risk is, and what underlying factors may be involved,” he said.

***

Many researchers say the best solution is to use training practices that protect everyone from the risks associated with overexertion. One model is the Army, which no longer screens for the trait but takes across-the-board precautions. Since the change in practices, studies have shown, soldiers with the trait have no higher risk of dying in basic training than those without.

• Carrier status matters, even beyond making reproductive decisions. Whether screening has been demonstrated to save lives or not, wouldn’t you want to know if vigorous exercise made you more apt to keel over and die than most other people?
• Three decades after keeping SCT carriers out of the Air Force Academy, there still “isn’t the data?” How is that possible?
• Gene-environment interactions matter. What we eat, how we train, how we sleep, how we respond to stress, etc. Each of these interacts with our own particular genomes. We will only understand these interactions if we systematically pay attention to them.
• How many other supposedly “recessive” traits can be detected in the heterozygous state with careful observation? I’d bet you dollars to donuts there are hundreds if not thousands of them.

This is intelligent design?

The first big test for GINA? Really?

The DNA test does not reveal an age, but it can reveal whether the player is the son of his claimed parents. Players have been known to find families willing to lend a younger child’s birth certificate so that a player can appear younger.

Miguel Sano, a top prospect in the Dominican Republic, was given DNA tests and a bone-scan procedure to help confirm that he was 16, he said in a telephone interview from his hometown, San Pedro de Macoris.

The DNA tests were conducted on Sano and his parents to determine if he was their son, he said. Sano’s sister underwent the bone scan as well, to help confirm that she was his older sister, and not a younger sibling whose birth certificate was used to falsify Sano’s age.

“In the eyes of baseball, there’s a huge difference between 16 and 19 years old,” said an international scout for a major league team. “It’s night and day. This is a runaway train they’re trying to put a lasso around.”

As ever, youth is wasted on the young. Play them off, son.

UPDATE:

“Play without fear and you will be successful!”

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

- William Shakespeare (1599); Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3

(top image via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; bottom image via Sidowsky’s Dwelling)

And finally, you are like a man possessed out there. You play with so much energy. Tell me honestly, how many Red Bulls do you drink before each game?

My limit is always one. Just one can. It doesn’t change whether it is the final or the semi-final. I don’t change my limit. I don’t drink coffee, just one Red Bull. Not only that, I spread [that one can] over the three periods taking only a few sips during intermissions.

The Personal Genome Project, which recently began the process of expanding its ranks, is founded on the idea of open consent: if you become a participant, there will be no serious attempt made to keep your DNA sequence or phenotypic data confidential. Participants take an exam and must score 100%; they learn the risks before they sign up. Given the almost-daily revelations about performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, might something akin to the PGP’s libertarian/caveat-emptor approach to genomic information be taken with athletes and PEDs? Jere Longman seems to think it might:

If there is anything to be gained from this latest suspension, hopefully it will be a serious debate about whether punishing athletes is justified or selective persecution. Baseball must ask itself whether it is better to continue harsh punitive measures -– which have had unintended consequences in other sports — or to educate athletes about doping and let them proceed at their own informed risk.

Qu’est-ce que c’est? A refugee from Bee Movie? The love child of a large drug-addicted boll weevil and a mutant Pittsburgh Steeler?  No and no. Why, it’s SYRINGE MAN. Mise en garde, Peloton!

(via Deadspin)

…The book also reveals that, during spring training in 1999, team doctors revealed to owner George Steinbrenner that Torre had prostate cancer - even before informing the manager himself.

“None of us can do the things we did five years ago, not even you guys. Some of you are writing slower than ever. The stuff you talk about in the paper just don’t make sense. Some of you are dressing kinda funny.”

- Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb educating journalists on human frailty