To date, baseball pitchers have opted for the surgery only after suffering ligament damage, but elective-enhancement surgery is getting inevitable. And it will show up in other sports as well.
In fact, some players have already undergone laser eye surgery as it has been shown that “players coming off eye surgery are likely to see substantial improvements in batting average and power.”
But if sports object to using a pill or a cream that changes body’s chemistry, it should be a graver offense to reshape your cornea or reengineer tendon and bone structure.
“We’re only now starting to understand kinematics and mobility. In the next five to ten years, we’re really going to understand how, say, the knee works in all three dimensions,” explains Freddie Fu, surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh. In a decade, a quarterback might have muscle cells removed from his legs. Those cells would be engineered in the lab to be stronger and reinserted, enabling a 35-year-old quarterback to run like he’s 20. The same technique could be used around shoulder joints, adding power and durability to the arms of pitchers, weight lifters, and volleyball players. As minimally invasive and arthroscopic techniques improve, surgeons will be able to tweak bicyclists’ hearts to increase stroke volume and reroute digestive systems to optimize energy absorption.
Medical ethicists are already starting to worry about the implications. Baseball has the excuse that surgery isn’t prohibited, and steroids are. But as the science of physical enhancement progresses, that distinction will become difficult to justify.
Via Wired.