28/04/00
Engineering Athleticism
Summary:
How close are we to the possibility of using genetic manipulation to create faster and stronger athletes? Sports philosopher ANDY MIAH discusses the ethics of engineering sports supermen and wonderwomen.
Plus, the co-mingling of wartime remembrance and sport on Anzac Day in Australia. And the role played by the Melbourne Cricket Club in First World War politics, especially in the highly charged conscription debate.
And the latest in surfboard design - one that's made from bamboo. World top ranking surfer Sunny Garcia is trialling this environmentally-friendly board, which is manufactured in Australia.
Details or Transcript:
THEME
Amanda Smith: On The Sports Factor this week, 'Engineering Athleticism'. Will genetic manipulation of athletes be the next big issue for sport?
And we'll also commemorate last Tuesday's Anzac Day with a look at sport in Australia during the First World War; in particular the role taken by the leading sports club of the day in WWI politics. Plus we'll find out about a new kind of surfboard, that's more environmentally friendly in its construction than other boards, and which is currently being trialled by the world's highest ranked surfer, Sunny Garcia.
But first to the brave new world of genetic engineering, and what it might mean for sport. Andy Miah is a sports philosopher from de Montfort University in England. His particular interest is in the potential impact of genetic manipulation on sport, and what the ethics of this are. Before we get onto that though, is genetic enhancement of athletes a real possibility, and one that we do have to grapple with?
Andy Miah: I think yes, definitely, and I think a lot of people are feeling this as well. We have the Human Genome Project which has been running for some years which is this huge international project to try to map all the genes of the human genome. So a lot of people are taking this very seriously; there is an interest to try and map our genes so we can use this knowledge to try and make use of it to correct genetic defects or whatever. But even with the application to sport, there is a growing interest. There was an article in the sports medicine journal on gene therapy in sport, to promote muscle repair; so there are people thinking about how can we use genetics to actually help an athlete, or try to enhance an athlete's performance in some way.
But I think also there is the use of this kind of genetics to think about this as a 'thought' experiment, so thinking about genetics allows us to consider, Well what is important here? Because a lot of people have a concern about genetics. There is this intuitive dislike of genetically engineering human beings. By thinking about this, we can think about "Well what's important here? Why is genetic engineering a problem? What is it taking from us as human beings that concerns us?", and so by thinking about it hypothetically as well as practically, it's useful as well.
Amanda Smith: But what sort of things are we talking about here as far as manipulating someone's genes for better athletic performance?
Andy Miah: Well I think we can start first of all by looking at what we have. Already amongst us as human beings we have this natural enhancement. There are cases where we've seen natural enhanced genes, where some people have had for example, a gene that promotes the manufacture of red blood cells to an abnormal degree, which thus raises the blood's capacity to carry oxygen, and thus produces greater stamina. So we've had athletes like this who have had this genetic dysfunction that has been enhanced in some way. So we could look to replicate that initially. We could engineer a gene that could be injected perhaps into a person that would promote this red blood cell count and enhance their stamina to some degree. And we do this in a very crude way already: we have blood doping, where blood is removed from an athlete and then reintroduced to the body at a later stage to increase this blood cell count, which then increases the stamina of an athlete. So we have this already, to some degree, but certainly we can engineer other kinds of things as well.
But also we could engineer athletes early on in life, so we're not talking necessarily about just doing it at an adult stage, so before birth even, we could engineer genes within a human that could promote greater height, promote strength, promote resilience to disease or make someone faster; these fantastical kinds of things really.
Amanda Smith: Well aren't the moral and ethical questions around this genetic enhancement in sport similar to those that currently exist around the use of performance enhancing drugs?
Andy Miah: With some of them I think there are. There are lots of overlaps. If you look at the example I gave about blood doping, that promotes similar kinds of concerns. So there is a concern that this could be harmful to an athlete to use this kind of technology. So that's one for starters. There's also the concern that this is cheating, and this is perhaps the most prominent concern about genetics, that genetically engineering an athlete would be to cheat. You know, if you're enhanced in this way then you're cheating. But we already have genetic advantage in sport already, there's already this natural difference between people, so in response it could be argued "Well, it's not really making a great deal of difference; there's already distinctions between their genetic capabilities, so this is similarly just replicating a similar kind of thing". And also to say that it's cheating is to make a claim about the rules to some extent. Well genetic engineering and using it to enhance an athlete isn't built in to any rule system yet, so as far as cheating goes, it's not clear whether it is, so there is this uncertainty.
There's also this concern about it being coercive, so this idea to remain competitive you'd have to be genetically engineered. If people suddenly were engineered by their parents or decided to use gene therapy to increase their muscle mass or whatever, then the concern is that athletes would have to use this to remain competitive. So there are some similarities, but there are also other kinds as well. The eugenic concerns about genetic engineering are very strong, so there are concerns that we might alter our gene pool if we do these things; if engineered humans start coming about then we're going to alter what it is to be a human being; we might reduce genetic diversity in some way and tamper with evolution in a way that we might not be able to go back on. So there's this concern.
Amanda Smith: Well at a time when it seems like setting new world records in sport is becoming more difficult, or at least when they are achieved it's by smaller and smaller margins of time or distance, and when people are starting to think about whether we're close to reaching the limits of our natural athletic capabilities, does the idea of breeding athletes through gene manipulation offer us anything that is worth considering, even though as you say instinctively it's a pretty spooky idea?
Andy Miah: Yes I think it does. It seems to me that genetics can offer this continued interest in world records; we might not be able to surpass our limits any more if we reach this human limit. Then to keep that going, to keep this enhancement going, we're going to have to seek some other means, and how are we going to do this? Well genetic engineering I think offers this possibility, so we can use it to keep enhancing our athletes, to keep seeing the spectacle of performance, we want to see the freak show, we want to see the never-has-been-seen-before, we want to see the world records being broken, all these kinds of things. And I think genetics can offer this kind of sustained interest in these things.
Amanda Smith: Will though, having to grapple with the questions raised by the possible genetic engineering of athletes force us to think about and even reappraise what is of value and virtue to us in sport, that it might not just be the records and the freak shows?
Andy Miah: Yes, well I think it does. For me the important thing here seems to be Well, where did we end up here? If we keep using technology to enhance an athlete, where do we end up? Can we keep doing this, first of all? If we can't keep doing this then we have some serious problems in sport. If records can no longer be broken, then where do we go from here? What's important for sport here? If we're valuing records and we can no longer break them any more, then we need to think about Well what is really important here? And I think this is where we either get into embracing something like genetics or more radical technologies which seem to augment the human in some way as to seem unrecognisable at the end of things, which I don't think people really want to do. Or we can look at, Well what else is valuable about sport? What is the most important thing in sport? Is it the results? I don't think it is, I don't think the results are going to be the most important thing when it becomes realised that there is a limit on how much we can do here, and I think we'll start to see the valuing of fair play, these kinds of virtues in sport that seem to take a back seat to the winner, you know, who's doing the best, who is the best, kind of thing. So I think yes, it will bring about a reappraisal, or it will bring about a very radical form of enhancement like genetics.
Amanda Smith: How much thought has been given to all this in genetic circles, Andy, because if you're talking about being able to repair or indeed improve people physically through gene manipulation, the most obvious application of this is in sport.
Andy Miah: There's not been a great deal. In bioethics certainly there haven't been a great deal. The most you will find within the literature is one or two line references to the possibility of using this for athletes, and it hasn't been thought through. And the difficulty with this is that there are two levels of consideration here. There's the one level of bioethics where we need to think about the general implications of this technology, and a lot of people are doing this. There's also the sporting level, and this also influences other aspects of society as well. We have for example, the implications of genetic information being made available to insurance companies which might prejudice people's ability to get good insurance kind of thing; if they haven't got a good genetic profile they might be prejudiced in some way. So in other areas as well there are these concerns, but certainly within sport there hasn't been much interest in this at all. And the implications are very big I think. From a practical level, how would governing bodies deal with this if someone was genetically enhanced? What would their response be? As things stand they don't seem to have response to it, there doesn't seem to be any reference to genetic enhancement as a means for disqualifying a competitor from competition. So that these questions need to be thought about, I think.
Amanda Smith: Well do you think that the genetic enhancement of athletes is inevitable in some way? Whatever the arguments against it, and that is that "because we can, we will"?
Andy Miah: I'm not convinced by this "if we can, we will" thesis. I don't think just because we can, we will, or at least I think this remark is used, or this commentary to genetics is used in a very dangerous way. It seems to scare people, the idea of this technology, because we have our heads filled with such dystopian images such as Brave New World, where we have this situation, where people are enhanced, and it's horrible situation with Frankenstein in our head, we're manipulating life. And so I think this phrase "if we can, we will" is problematic because it creates this concern in people about this technology, which isn't objective; it doesn't think about how we can use this rationally to make use of this technology for the benefit of human beings.
Amanda Smith: Yes, and it really gets back to your point about having to look at what we value about sport, doesn't it?
Andy Miah: Yes, it does, and also in the broader context of how we want to use this technology, how can we use this to the benefit of human beings, and what will be useful here, what will be useful in sport here. Will it be useful to use as technology? It's not clear that it will; it seems that to use it would perpetuate values that in the end might not be that important anyway. You know, if it makes an athlete faster or stronger or quicker, whatever, then these might not seem to be the important things; they might seem to be at the present; we're immersed in this culture of winning and success in being the best, but I think to embrace this will lead us down a very difficult path.
Amanda Smith: Andy Miah, from de Montfort University in the United Kingdom. And I must say it is a pretty repellent idea to think that the 100 metres at the Olympic Games could be run by a bunch of genetically enhanced athletes. But the possibility is real, and whether we go that way or not depends on what we want sport to be about.
Now last Tuesday was, of course, Anzac Day; across Australia a day of marches commemorating the landing of troops at Gallipoli in 1915.
MARCHING BAND AND CROWD
Amanda Smith: The Anzac Day public holiday has become not just a day for commemorative services and parades, but for sport, with fixtures across the football codes, for example. For the first time, there was an Anzac Day soccer match played in Canberra between the Australian Turkish All Stars and the Canberra Rockets. And in Melbourne, what's now become the traditional Anzac Day AFL game, played between Essendon and Collingwood at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Before the match at the MCG, an Anzac service was given by Bruce Ruxton, the Victorian President of the RSL, where the solemnity of wartime remembrance intertwined with the mock battle cries of a football match.
LAST POST
Bruce Ruxton: Lest we forget.
APPLAUSE/CHEERS/BUGLE CALL - Reveille
Bruce Ruxton: Into it!
Amanda Smith: The Melbourne Cricket Ground, according to MCC historian, Alf Batchelder, actually has a long association with Anzac Day commemoration, going back to the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, in 1916.
Alf Batchelder: Some of the first Anzac ceremonies held in Melbourne were at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and they must have been enormously moving events, because in one instance you had 50,000 people there, standing bareheaded, in silence, remembering the loved ones because virtually one in every two families had lost somebody, and through all of that silence then comes the Dead March from 'Saul', and if you can imagine the sombre tones of that, playing on the emotions of those very hurt people, it must have been an amazing occasion, and that happened more than once.
MUSIC - Dead March from Saul
Amanda Smith: 'Playing the Greater Game' is the title of a book by Alf Batchelder in which he explores the role and influence that the Melbourne Cricket Club and Melbourne Cricket Ground had in First World War politics, especially in recruitment, and in the highly controversial conscription debate. Alf Batchelder says that the dominant place held by the Melbourne Cricket Club in Australian sport and society at the time of the First World War was significant to this.
Alf Batchelder: Quite simply, there was no other club like it in Australia, and probably the world, because MCC members had been involved in the establishment of Australian football, not as a club, but the members were, contrary to what people think. They were involved in the establishment of golf, tennis, baseball, shooting and consequently by the time of the First World War, they are a very prominent sporting body, and of course above all of that is their involvement in the development of Australian cricket. And then you've got to add on to that the role that they played in the community, because by 1915 the membership totalled 5½ thousand and that was the cream of Melbourne society, the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most prominent, and consequently that gave the club a much greater eminence than it perhaps possesses now. And when you put those two things together, the leading sporting body in the country plus the most powerful people in the Federal capital, it's a pretty big mixture.
Amanda Smith: Well on the day that war broke out, there was a football match being played on the Melbourne Cricket Ground between two of the public schools, wasn't there? What do we know of the mood and attitude at the ground as the news came through?
Alf Batchelder: Well actually we know a lot, because it's a period when almost everything got put down on paper, and there was very little censorship. And that particular afternoon it was Xavier playing Melbourne Grammar, and I believe they actually heard the echo of the gunshot that was fired at Portsea across the bows of the German ship that was leaving. And as the match was going on, there were newspapers brought down from the city, and there's an account that mentions how the boys stood standing silently in the rain reading those papers and wondering what it all meant for them. And something of that feeling of uncertainty and of great events at hand seems to have crept out onto the Oval itself, because the umpire's performance was labelled as not very good, and there's a slight lethargy creeping over the game. And there must have been a world war on for Xavier and Melbourne Grammar to go at it lethargically, because otherwise it's usually quite intense.
Amanda Smith: So what role did the Melbourne Cricket Club take in wartime politics, Alf? For example, in encouraging enlistment?
Alf Batchelder: That is a question that needs to be looked at on a couple of levels. Firstly, as a club, for the first few months of the war, sport continued as it had been going on for years before. But by early 1915, three months before Gallipoli, there was a sense that started to develop that perhaps the people of Victoria were not doing as much as they could for enlistment. And so the Melbourne Cricket Club called a meeting at the Melbourne Town Hall under the patronage of the Governor and various other officials (the Governor was the club patron actually) and you again had that social elite of Melbourne prominent in this. And their purpose was to stimulate recruiting among sportsmen, but out of that came the impetus for other sporting bodies to consider, "Well what should we do for the war? Should we in fact continue playing? If we do, do we continue to play as many games as we've done, or do we taper off?". There had to be a review of the whole sporting situation in Melbourne, and the Melbourne Cricket Club started that.
Now on another level, the Club's position with regard to recruiting and such involves members, and there's a handful of members who are at the forefront of activities to stimulate recruiting. Firstly, William Morris Hughes; we didn't even know he was a member until I found his membership application form, and that caused a considerable amount of rewriting. Hughes of course is adamant from the start of the war that the nation must give its all. And so you've got that sort of leadership coming from the most prominent member of the MCC, then at State level you've got the Premier, Sir Alexander Peacock, you've got prominent members of the parliament, Sir William Irvine for example, who use every opportunity they can to get on recruiting platforms and encourage people to enlist.
Now throughout the war the club is very supportive of recruiting drives, except at the time of conscription. They're not against conscription, but their feeling was that people should play the game, that people should enlist because it's the right thing to do. Consequently, while they wanted people in uniform, they didn't quite, to me, seem to accept the principle of compulsion that conscription represented.
Amanda Smith: Nevertheless, the Melbourne Cricket Ground was the site of a huge pro-conscription rally in December 1917. Tell me about that event.
Alf Batchelder: It certainly was. It's perhaps one of the least-known events in the Ground's very colourful history. In December of 1917 there was to be the second conscription referendum, and over the last 18 months in Australia there had been a very great build-up of social, political, economic and religious forces on the question of compulsory enlistment, and of course here in the Victorian community the two key figures in that were Daniel Mannix, the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, and the Prime Minister, William Morris Hughes. The culmination of that campaign was to be a monster rally (they were all rallies of monsters in those days!) at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. 100,000 tickets were distributed; we're not sure of the numbers that attended, the estimates vary from 60,000 to 100,000 but whatever it was, it was the largest crowd the Ground had ever seen to that point.
It was supposed to be, through the issuing of the tickets, a pro-conscription rally. But at the Richmond end of the Ground the No Conscriptionists had got a lot of tickets and were gathered down there. And once the speeches started, it was mayhem. Any object that could be found was thrown: eggs, fruit, even a bag of chaff. So that by the time the Prime Minister was due to appear on the stage, the place was in pandemonium.
In the fracas that followed, there was an attempt made to throw a nine-inch knife at William Morris Hughes, but as always an alert returned soldier was there to save the day, and unfortunately one gentleman was impaled on one of the spiked fence posts. And the night really wasn't the success as far as a unified pro-conscription atmosphere was concerned, but I don't think there was any great surprise when the following week, the Melbourne Cricket Club Committee said "No, we won't let the Anti-Conscriptionists have the Ground for another meeting."
MUSIC HALL SONG - Binky Doodle I Do
Amanda Smith: And that was Alf Batchelder, author of 'The Greater Game', about the Melbourne Cricket Club and Melbourne Cricket Ground during the First World War.
Now on Wednesday this week, the final of the Bell's Beach Surfing Championship was held. This is the oldest, and one of the most prestigious of the events that make up professional surfing's World Championship Tour. And the men's event was won this year by the Hawaiian surfer, Sunny Garcia. Out of competition, Sunny Garcia has been experimenting with a new kind of surfboard, one that's made from bamboo, which has the promise of being not only a high performance board, but also an environmentally friendly one. And the leading manufacturer of these boards is an Australian company.
For The Sports Factor, Nicolette Jackson spoke with Frank McWilliams, who runs Bamboo Surfboards Australia in Byron Bay.
Nicolette Jackson: Well Frank McWilliams, here we are at the gorgeous Belongil Beach, and we've come here, appropriately enough, to talk about the work that you do, which is making bamboo surfboards. Now this is a relatively recent enterprise for you, isn't it? You actually went over to America I believe last year and checked out what they were doing there, and now you're going to become the first commercial producer of bamboo surfboards in Australia.
Frank McWilliams: That's right, yes. We were very interested in the bamboo right from the very start, and my partner and I realised that Byron Bay was the perfect place to do it; we had the expertise, we've got bamboo growing locally which we're going to produce here in Australia, and it was just a great idea from the start and it's working out very well.
Nicolette Jackson: What's the appeal of bamboo surfboards?
Frank McWilliams: I think there's lots of appeal for bamboo surfboards. It starts really from when you first look at a bamboo surfboard, immediately there's something warm, it's nice to look at, it gives you the idea of surf straight away, and then right through to the construction of the board and when you pick it up and you realise it's light, and then you try and put your fingers into it, you can't dent it, and it just feels like it's going to go, right from the start.
Nicolette Jackson: So maybe you could explain to people who don't understand, like me, how surfboards are made; what the bamboo is replacing in a traditional surfboard.
Frank McWilliams: Simply put, the bamboo replaces the fibreglass skin in a surfboard. When you get a normal blank, what they call a blank, to shape a surfboard on, it has a stringer in it, it's made out of eurythane foam and then they put fibreglass and resin over the top. What we've done is several things: we've replaced that eurythane blank with a styrene blank and it's closed cell styrene so it doesn't take water; we've taken the stringer out and we've put all that strength into the outer core of the skin, and we use bamboo to laminate the board with epoxy. So it becomes a very strong shell over a nice styrene core.
Nicolette Jackson: And how does that feel when you're actually surfing a wave, what's the difference?
Frank McWilliams: Everyone will tell you to surf with a bamboo surfboard feels very different from the normal board, they feel very lively, they're very tough under the foot, they don't dent, and so there's a certain amount of what they call push-flex in the board. If you've snowboarded or skiied, you know what that's like, and although the board's very stiff, it still has, when you push it it gets a bit of flex, like a bow, and so it really feels lively under the water, very much easier to do aerials, and sort of nice manoeuvres, off-the-lips, floaters, feels very good to do that with.
Nicolette Jackson: I believe there's quite a well-known Hawaiian surfer who's adopted a bamboo surfboard, and he's proving pretty successful with it.
Frank McWilliams: Yes, well Sunny Garcia came and saw us the other day down at the factory after he'd won the Billabong. He was very impressed with what we are doing. He'd ridden a bamboo board in Hawaii at the Triple Crown, and won that. He's rapt in the bamboo surfboard, he loves it, he loves the feel and he's hoping that this will give him the edge this year to take out the world title.
Nicolette Jackson: That would be pretty amazing for your sales, wouldn't it, if he did? Do you think they might end up being a whole separate bamboo surfboard category in surfing competitions? What's the future, do you think?
Frank McWilliams: I don't know what the future is for bamboo surfboards; all we know is that it's a fantastic product, and people are very warm to it. When they get on the board they're very positive about it. I don't think I could ever see a separate category, it's just something that will evolve into I think more bamboo surfboards out there. It's another aspect of surfing that will help it along; it's a great sport, it's a great feeling to go surfing, and if bamboo can help, well that's fantastic.
Nicolette Jackson: Environmentally has it got some advantages? I mean fibreglass isn't particularly environmentally friendly but I imagine you probably still have to use some nasty chemicals in the creation of this one?
Frank McWilliams: Yes, you know the environmental aspects is that we hope it's improved. Anything, as long as improving, is a great step in the right direction, and because the blank is recyclable, that's improving. Because the bamboo was really just a timber, it can be recycled. We still have to use epoxy which is a nasty substance, but it's less toxic than normal resins. So all in all it adds up to one step in the right direction, yes.
Nicolette Jackson: Now you were saying that you are actually the first Australian manufacturers of this, are you actually the first people worldwide to produce them on a mass scale? I mean they are being made in America.
Frank McWilliams: Yes, well there are several people trying to make bamboo surfboards throughout the world, and are doing that. But nobody at this stage is able to produce the numbers that we're able to produce and the quality, and the style of bamboo board. We have a great range of boards that we can make, and we can virtually make a custom board of bamboo, which is very hard to do. And now I'd say yes, we are the first.
Amanda Smith: Frank McWilliams and his bamboo surfboards, speaking there with Nicolette Jackson on Belongil Beach, Byron Bay on the New South Wales coast.
And that's The Sports Factor for this Friday. Michael Shirrefs produces The Sports Factor, and I'm Amanda Smith. Thanks for your company and I hope you'll join me again next Friday.
Guests on this program:
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Andy Miah Sports Philosopher from De Montfort University in England. |
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Alf Batchelder Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) historian and author of "Playing The Greater Game: The Melbourne Cricket Club And Its Ground In World War I". |
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Frank McWilliams Manager of Bamboo Surfboards Australia. |
Publications:
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Playing The Greater Game: The Melbourne Cricket Club And Its Ground In World War I Author: Alf Batchelder Price: $85 (Aus) Publisher: Self-published, 1998 A hard-cover, signed limited edition of 200 copies. Copies available from the MCG Gallery of Sport Phone (+61 3) 9657 8860 |
Musical Items:
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Disc 3 - Track 9 - March Time to Air: 0842 Duration: 0'40" CD Title: Saul - English Oratorio in Three Acts Artist: Barockorchester Frankfurt, conducted by Joachim Carlos Martini Composer: George Frideric Handel Label/CD No: Naxos - 8.554361-63 Copyright: HNH International Ltd, 1998 |
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Track 15 - Binky Doodle I Do Time to Air: 0852 Duration: 0'35" CD Title: Diggers Artist: Albert Whelan Composer: Albert Whelan Label/CD No: Larrikin - LRF 344 Copyright: Larrikin Entertainment, 1994 |
Further information:
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Link to article on headspace http://www.abc.net.au/arts/headspace/rn/sfactor/tech/edge.htm |
Presenter:
Amanda Smith
Producer:
Michael Shirrefs
©1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation