I think it's surprising that the article predicts the impacts of gene editing to be relatively small.
> Even so, the prospects for exceeding current records through gene editing are slim. Today’s racehorses are already tightly optimized for speed, balancing strength against the cost of carrying additional muscle mass. Adding more muscle is relatively low-hanging fruit, and if this were the key to unlocking greater speed, selective breeding would likely already have brought it about.
It's a whole new tool in the toolbox, and can introduce mutations that didn't first arise by chance in order to be then spread with selective breeding.
Genetic diversity is a very interesting topic that’s well worth exploring, but it seems to me that Occam’s razor requires us to consider the possibility they just had a really good, well timed dosage of performance enhancing drugs for Secretariat back in the day.
> After he died, Secretariat’s heart was reportedly measured at almost 10 kilograms – twice as much as normal. This appears to have been a physiological fluke, however, as it isn’t a trait reliably passed down to offspring.
In humans, enlargement of internal organs (including heart) is know to be a side effect of using growth hormone as a PED. Wiki says [0] that "Extracted growth hormone was used since the late 1950s", so in 1973 it was already a well known technology.
I don't know why the article goes on so much about Secretariat. Flat races are horse races on easy mode. Steeplechases are proper horse racing
I think it's surprising that the article predicts the impacts of gene editing to be relatively small.
> Even so, the prospects for exceeding current records through gene editing are slim. Today’s racehorses are already tightly optimized for speed, balancing strength against the cost of carrying additional muscle mass. Adding more muscle is relatively low-hanging fruit, and if this were the key to unlocking greater speed, selective breeding would likely already have brought it about.
It's a whole new tool in the toolbox, and can introduce mutations that didn't first arise by chance in order to be then spread with selective breeding.
Genetic diversity is a very interesting topic that’s well worth exploring, but it seems to me that Occam’s razor requires us to consider the possibility they just had a really good, well timed dosage of performance enhancing drugs for Secretariat back in the day.
> After he died, Secretariat’s heart was reportedly measured at almost 10 kilograms – twice as much as normal. This appears to have been a physiological fluke, however, as it isn’t a trait reliably passed down to offspring.
In humans, enlargement of internal organs (including heart) is know to be a side effect of using growth hormone as a PED. Wiki says [0] that "Extracted growth hormone was used since the late 1950s", so in 1973 it was already a well known technology.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hormone_therapy#Extract...
> today, only the genus Equus survives, which includes horses, zebras, asses, and donkeys.
What about hippogriffs?
Asking for a friend...
Someone should really get around to cloning secretariat.