Sports In Michael Behar's Will Genetics Destroy Sports
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Why do people love sports so much? Sports bring out the competitive nature in people with the expectation that the game will be played fairly and honestly. Michael Behar argues that this beloved pastime is threatened by the unfair advantages and dangers of gene doping in his article “Will Genetics Destroy Sports?,” published in 2004 in Discover magazine. Behar worked hard to establish his credibility through reputable sources and properly used genetic therapy vernacular and provided a logical argument with the assistance of experiments and statistics; however, Behar missed a key component to supporting his claim that pulls apart the effectiveness of his argument. In his article, Behar examines the effect of the misuse of gene therapy and related genetic alterations to enhance muscle performance for a physical advantage over others. Gene therapy aims to grow and rapidly repair damaged muscles. The term for this misuse is referred to as gene doping. Behar specifically looks at the misuse of an “insulin-like growth factor [gene] (IGF-I)” (156) throughout his article. Gene…show more content… The science world at the close of the twentieth-century was fascinated by genes and their potential. The twentieth century marks the cloning of Dolly, the discovery of precancerous cells, and immense progress with the human genome. It makes sense that a collection of research and studies contributed to the manipulation of genes in humans. Since so much had already happened with gene therapy and enough potential and unknowns remained to be studied for decades to come, 2004 was almost the perfect fit for this article. In consideration of the newness of gene therapy and related science, publishing the article in Discover, a scientific magazine that focuses on up-and-coming scientific developments and technology, was an ideal choice for “Will Genetics Destroy