Everybody, sing!
“Deutscher Kinder, uber alles…”
Thanks for the Simpsons reference - I was unaware of it. If y’all could just stop the bickering now, I’d be mighty pleased.
I’ll tell you what. Can you tell me how the Simpsons using Roger Myers Snr. as a means to lampoon Walt Disney has anything to do with the story linked in the OP?.
and if I was going to use a simpsons reference that might actually be relevant to the story, how about “It’s one of those superbabies! From Brazil!”
Well, a lot of articles that I’ve seen about this kid refer to him as a “baby Superman.” Some discuss the possibility that someone might try to create “supermen” with this mutation for athletic purposes. I’ve seen comments on discussion sites that say things like, “Haha, wow, I guess Germans really ARE superior!” I think to someone who’s seen that Simpsons episode, German + supermen + superior would naturally be a reminder of that quote. Heck, if the kid had been Chinese, I’m sure someone would have come up with “Chinese Supermen Are Our Superiors.” Talking about some sort of supermen being our superiors is a geek thing. I’ve heard it come up a LOT - note that the second post in the thread is ANOTHER Simpsons reference.
We have no reason to believe that this joke has anything to do with anything other than a tv show. We have no reason to believe that the OP has anything against Germans or thinks they’re all Nazis. It was a joke, people didn’t get it, it got explained. While I wish more people got the reference, I’m glad that a REAL example of anti-German prejudice wouldn’t go unchallenged.
And I, for one, welcome our new Simspons-quoting overlords.
Actually, you’re the one who mentions Germans; the OP only makes a Nazi joke. The Head Nazi, if you’ll recall, was an Austrian, so I think it’s you who owe Germans the apology.
Either the baby’s father was also heterozygous for the trait, giving the couple a one in four chance of having a kid who was homozygous for the trait (most likely), or there was a new mutation for the gene in question from the father’s sperm(less likely).
Well, I wouldn’t project too far based on incomplete knowledge. Those patients who are heterozygous for hyperlipidemia have cholesterol levels in the 300-400+ range. So it was expected that the homozygous individuals would have cholesterol levels in the 600-800 range. But when they were found, they had cholesterols in excess of 1200! Also heart attacks before puberty, but that’s another issue.
Yeah, I expect the kid will have health problems. But my WAG is that odds are 50/50 that when health problems arise, they’ll be unexpectedly from some different direction that will make us re-examine our physiologic models. Hope I’m wrong and he does fine.
I think the German connection isn’t that much of a stretch, given that the kid in the link in the OP, which is what this thread is supposedly about, is German.
Ah. OK. I apologize for not reading the link closely enough. Y’all apologize for being way too easily offended over absolutely nothing at all?
Forget the Nazis, I only hope that Xavier can get to the child first.
Yes, he makes a nazi joke. The question is why. We have a news story about about a sick child. A German child. Now he associates this with nazis and includes a nazi joke. There is nothing wrong with the joke itself, actually it was rather funny in its original context.
Is this a problem for me? No, but unfortunately I can’t fully appreciate the wit and originality either.
It’s just a random stereotype and usually you can be pretty sure that people just don’t think about it. It’s not worth being upset.
If you want to how this looks to me imagine the following scenario:
On random stories involving blacks I use the opportunity to make some “well endowed” joke. I would make a slightly strange impression, wouldn’t I?
PS: Eve, I saw your last post on preview, but this was supposed to be a general comment anyway.
No, we have a news story about a German child that is, at the moment, perfectly healthy, called a “baby Superman”, and has a level of strength and muscle development far superior to that of his peers. Potential negative effects on his future health are mentioned in one sentence near the end of the article. The OP associates this with a Simpsons quote and uses it as a thread title. If they’d been Teutonic Supermen or Aryan Supermen or just German Supermen in the episode, I’m sure it still would have ended up as a thread title.
really, are you deliberately not noticing the leap the OP makes just to prove a point?
ah, preview is my friend.
Gollum, addressing Gollum.
There is an entire breed of cattle with this condition, called the belgian blue. They make He-man look positively wimpy. I shudder to think how muscular this kid will be when he grows up.
Okay, now the secret level on Diablo 2 makes more sence. That is one badass looking cow.
I asked a Jewish friend of mine (no really, some of my best fr… uh, never mind), and he said yeah, that would be OK and in fact it would be really funny.
So I guess that’s settled.
What’s Mike Epstein got to do with this? 
Question to medical sorts out there: how does myostatin inhibit muslce growth? I know there have been past threads on the fad of myostatin blockers, but those seemed to be on the dangers of the particular bullshit treatments.
Do the cattle have the same condition? Are they healthy despite it, or do they have problems?
It doesn’t inhibit muscle growth at all.
What it does is break down muscle tissue. It’s what is responsible for the feed-back loop behind a sedentary lifestyle causing weak muscles.
So if you can’t make myostatin, your muscles only ever grow, and never atrophy. The actual amount that you use your muscles becomes irrelevant to their actual size, anything that you do results in them getting bigger.
Normal muscles are in a constant state of flux between signals that tell them to grow and signals that tell them to degrade. There is much research being done to find safe ways to halt the degradation progress, for applications ranging from anti-aging research to muscular dystrophy to space-exploration.