The Mutants are Coming!

Yesterday afternoon, I snuck away from writing my law review article to catch a matinee of the movie X-Men III: The Last Stand, and I’m pretty sure steroids are old news. The next big thing may well be performance enhancing surgery, but surely, the mutants are coming. Will genetic mutants be eligible to participate in American sports, or international competition? Of course, there are some sensible grounds for excluding some of the X-Men. Wolverine, after all, has both a genetic mutation (quick healing) and a surgical alteration (adamantium fused with his skeletal structure, plus claws). Excluding surgically altered mutants makes sense. Let’s just permit natural mutants play baseball and the like. But what is a natural mutant? Does one have to be born a mutant, like most of the X-Men? What about Spiderman, who was not born a mutant? Was his mutation “natural”? Perhaps we could simply require mutants, and their close friends, aliens, to not use their powers while participating in sports? For example, on Smallville Clark Kent was able to play football in high school (quite successfully) without using his powers. Maybe we just need a sensible rule that mutant and alien powers can’t be used on the field. But then again, such a rule might be hard to enforce. How can we be sure Clark wasn’t using his powers when he engaged in his Vince Younge-esque heroics?

(Attempted) Satire aside, some of these issues may actually be relevant. There are interesting essays on the subject here, here, here and here. Perhaps the most striking story about genetic mutation in sports is that of Finnish Olympic skier Eero Maentyranta. Eero won two gold medals at the 1964 Olympics. Later, the world learned that he had been born with a version of the EPO gene that caused him to produce 25-50 percent more red blood cells than a typical human. Red blood cells distribute oxygen to the body’s muscles; his genetic advantage gave Eero superior aerobic endurance. Synthetic EPO is of course banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency; should a genetic mutant like Eero also be excluded? Can we draw a distinction here between a “natural” mutant and the recipient of gene therapy?

Of course, one might argue that all professional athletes are genetic “freaks,” in the sense that their combination of strength, speed, agility and hand-eye-coordination is well above the mean characteristics of our species over the course of human history. Some skills may be learned, but there are very few professional athletes who can’t claim at least some combination of natural “genetic” gifts.

Any conflict between this post and my earlier post on the irrelevance of evolutionary biology is entirely intentional.

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