The illegal and unethical world of gene doping
For as long as anyone can remember, athletes have been trying to enhance their performance through the use of performance enhancing drugs. Now there is a new method of doping on the horizon that could start a very scary trend
among elite athletes. Gene doping is a new scientific method for increasing muscle mass and helping an athlete build strength and endurance. Basically the way it works is that drugs are taken that would work to increase muscle mass, build endurance, allow
more oxygen delivery into the system and reduce pain perception. The problem for anti-doping agencies is that because gene therapy is undistinguishable from their natural counterparts in the body, they will be undetectable in an athlete’s blood stream. Hopefully
the authorities can figure out a way to detect this very unethical practice.
In the 1970s, research was conducted into altering the genetic code in a person’s body in order to help reduce muscle degeneration, help in muscle repair and increase oxygen intake among many other things. Over the years,
this technology has rapidly moved on and clinical trials were started on drugs that would help a person combat disease through gene therapy. The problem with this sort of research on the one hand was that it provoked an ethical issue that its use could effectively
make people live longer lives by altering their genetic makeup. The other side of the argument felt that gene therapy could effectively end debilitating diseases and help people live healthier lives in the process. While this debate was going on, athletes
with a desire for cheating started to pay close attention. Gene therapy could basically become an undetectable method of using performance enhancing drugs because if an athlete would use gene therapy, he or she could get away with cheating. Gene doping would
be undistinguishable in an athlete’s bloodstream and they could get away with using a new method of performance enhancement.
Muscle repair therapy, for example, could be used by an athlete with perfectly healthy muscles to increase their size and strength. This would then enable the athlete to become more powerful and help them in their sport.
Gene doping goes into different areas of performance enhancement as well. Some can be used to increase blood production in a person’s body and others can be used to increase the oxygen intake that an athlete’s lungs can accommodate. This is all very dangerous
territory because if one athlete uses gene therapy to increase their performance, then all the rest would have to do so as well, only if to keep up with that one person. Cheating would therefore become endemic. Gene therapy has its side effects too because
people have been known to die from using gene doping techniques.
Science is coming to the rescue though. Anti-doping agencies around the world are leading the charge by asking scientists to try and come up with ways and means to fight this new type of doping. And they seem to have come
up with a solution. A whole new approach to drug testing would have to be introduced but it is one potential answer to the problem. At the moment, athletes’ blood samples are tested but in the future complete medical and forensic testing would take place to
monitor overall changes in an athlete’s gene expression and protein production. By monitoring these levels on a periodic basis the agencies would be able to pinpoint specific changes in an athlete’s physiological makeup.
The first case of genetic doping emerged a few years ago at the Turin Winter Olympics in 2006, but it was never confirmed because the drug used was still in a testing phase and had not emerged for use in humans. It seems
the drug ‘repoxygen’ might have been used by athletes but it is unlikely. Repoxygen is a drug that helps athletes to increase the number of red blood cells in their bodies. Even though it was never proved, there were speculations that some athletes may have
used the drug.
With science leading the charge in the fight against gene doping, hopefully in the future sports will not be tainted by this new type of cheating using performance enhancing drugs. Sports governing bodies will have to increase
their levels of vigilance and make sure sports do not get tainted in the future, especially with the horrendous threat of gene doping on the horizon.
Tags: