2012 Triple Crown

[John L]

0

Then by your reasoning we'll all be long dead and I'm still going to die knowing that horse is a freak of nature and that's that.

No, that is not My reasoning. I am just saying that genetic change is slower with horses than with other creatures, such as lab rats and dogs. And change will start slowly and accelerate with each succeeding generation.

And that is not a freak of nature, so to speak. Its a mutation instead. And that is how mutations become mainstream within a breeding population. If they are successful for a particular ecological niche, they will give a producing animal a 'select advantage' over others in the ability to pass those genes along to the next generation. That is how a population adapts to its environment All humans are doing is giving that 'select advantage' a helping push in that direction in order to gain financially from it.

I'm sure the ethics committee of the breeding associations will make sure that cheating by genetic manipulation will not be tolerated.

And just how are they going to do that? I contend that they are not violating any ethics at all. The appearance of the large heart was a natural occurrence that came about more than two hundred years ago. And until just the last few decades its significance was not really understood. This is something new, and has potential of making big changes within the horse racing community.

And the concept of actually helping along a natural mutation is something humans have been doing with plants and animals for thousands of years. As long as breeders are not using injections of steroids, or other drugs, which makes no sense, what ethics could they possibly be violating? And they certainly couldn't be any more rigid than the American Kennel Club, which is actually trying to improve its official breeds on an ongoing basis .

But logically, it is to the benefit of the organization that governs the thoroughbred racing business in the US to promote the improvement of these racers. It helps make the sport far more popular because a future super-horse makes for a better contender, guarantees faster races, along with broken records, and will automatically generate more interest in the sport. Why would they ever want to cut their own financial throat?

This is not some Doctor Frankenstein scenario where body parts are sewn together, and electricity is sent through the horse's frame. All this is is simply picking the best representatives, both male and female, which offer a better chance of producing offspring having larger hearts.

I just don't understand why so many people look at genetic engineering as something dangerous and in need of outlawing. Perhaps too many SciFi horror movies? For heaven's sake, we've been doin this with 'zea mays', from the lowly teosinte plant for several thousand years now. And we are still doing it in order to produce the very best corn possible. Every time you go to the grocery and pick up fresh ears of white, yellow, or mixed colors, you are buying one of many different types that have been developed just recently. The only difference between what was being done earlier and what is done today is the controlled laboratory conditions.

And you can call all this 'freak' if you wish, but its not. Especially within the thoroughbred horse racing world. All the breeders are doing is just picking the best of both sexes and breeding them in order to come up with a better race horse. If they happen to use a CAT Scan, or MRI to look at a horse's heart size, where does that come off as unethical?