One piece of writing that I found to be extremely well written was an article in the New York Times titled Born to Run? Little Ones Get Test for Sports Gene. This article was about a new genetic test that might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of your children in order to help “pigeonhole” your child into doing fewer sports with more success.
This article was written very well. I was immediately drawn into the article because it brought in a personal story. It talked about a local, Donna Campiglia, and her excitement about learning of this test and how it will help her find the right match of activities for her 2 ½-year-old son Noah. The next paragraph is a quote by Ms. Campiglia defending why she believes this is such a facinating scientific development.
The article goes on to talk about the logistics of the test. The test costs $149 and aims to predicts a child’s natural athletic strengths. All that the test requires is a swab from inside the child’s cheek and along the gums so as to collect the DNA which is then returned to the lab for analysis of ACTN3.
The author of this article remains objective stating what some see as benefits of this new test and what others see as massive problems that will result from making this test widely available. It goes into discuss scientists views on this test and how accurate they think it might be.
This article was disturbing to me. So many sports which I played as a child I was definitely not gifted in, but through those experiences I made lasting friendships and important self-discoveries. To train children to play only those sports which they are genetically gifted in from the time they are old enough to even participate in sports robs them of their opportunity to find the sport they love.
I do not believe that this test would be used correctly by parents. Mr. Reilly was quoted as saying he fears that parents would misuse this test and go overboard with the results, specializing their children too quickly and fervently. I completely agree. If a test proves that your son is going to be a pro football player, from that point on parents will train their son to be nothing else. It takes away from the child’s right to chose his own future.
The author did a fabulous job writing this article and used nearly everything which we have learned a good media writer should. On such a highly debatable topic, he did a great job in presenting all angles to the issue without skewing the readers opinion.
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