Gene
Doping:
Sports
at
the
Cellular
Level
11/19/04
special to Drug War Chronicle by Steve Beitler as part of an occasional series on sports and drugs High school football coaches don't typically show much interest in the work of H. Lee Sweeney, who heads the department of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. But when Dr. Sweeney announced in 2003 that he and his colleagues had increased the muscle size of mice by up to 30 percent through genetic engineering, one coach contacted Sweeney. According to a Los Angeles Times report, the coach wanted to know if Sweeney could inject his entire team with the gene that had turned the rodents into "Schwarzenegger mice." Welcome to the new frontier of better performance through biochemistry. While the sports world has been riveted by news of steroid users and innuendo about those who might be, the next wave of performance enhancement has been forming. "Gene doping" is shorthand for the growing ability of scientists to alter the genes and genetic activity of adults so that their cells behave differently from how they were programmed to at birth. This ability could have breathtaking implications for the treatment and prevention of disease as well as for the alteration of humanity's physical capabilities. "We're trying to work with muscular dystrophy," says Dr. Sweeney. "But we're drawing a road map for how the athlete of the future could obtain tremendous performance enhancement. We need to be aware of what's possible so people can start to look for it." Like most aspects of genetic research, the science is at an extremely early stage, with hype outpacing results and many tough technical problems unresolved. But there is already awareness of how gene doping could transform the controversy over drugs in sports. This is because many forms of gene doping would bypass the bloodstream and urine and work their magic directly in muscles. This would make current drug tests irrelevant -- a nightmare for sports officials and organizations, who almost to a person are relying on testing as the solution to the problem of performance-enhancing drugs. One example of how genetic enhancement could work involves a hormone produced by the body called insulin-like growth-factor 1, or IGF-1. This hormone stimulates the production of satellite cells, a type of stem cell found in muscles. When satellite cells join with normal muscle fiber, they help heal injuries or make the muscle larger. Sweeney and other researchers have demonstrated these effects in mice and rats; the San Diego Union Tribune reported that in one experiment, scientists injected the IGF-1 gene into one leg of middle-aged mice but not the other. When the mice reached their age that is equivalent to people in their 80's, their untreated legs had lost 25 percent of their strength, but the injected legs were as strong as ever. The potential implications for athletes, as well as 74 million baby boomers bent on defying the ravages of age, are enormous. Genetic enhancement by athletes is "a challenge we take seriously," says Farnaz Khadem, director of communications for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The International Olympic Committee set up WADA in 1999 as an independent group chartered with ridding the Olympics, and the global circuit of elite track and field, cycling and other Olympic sports, of performance-enhancing drugs. WADA has organized conferences on gene doping, set up an advisory panel of experts, added gene doping to its list of banned activities and "has made education of athletes in general about doping one of the Agency's top priorities," Khadem reports. These actions reflect current orthodoxy: Gene doping in sports is cheating, it has to be eradicated and the testing system that WADA oversees is the best hope for doing that. Some scientists and scholars are challenging this view. Dr. Andy Miah is lecturer in media, bioethics and cyberculture at the University of Paisely in the UK and the author of numerous papers and a new book on genetic modification and sports. He told Jonathan Thompson of the Independent (UK) that genetic modification "could be very positive for sport. The idea of a naturally perfect athlete is romantic nonsense. An athlete achieves what he or she achieves through all sorts of means -- technology, sponsorship, support and so on. Utilizing genetic modification is merely a continuation of the way sport works." Dr. Norman Fost, who directs the medical ethics program at the University of Wisconsin, told Bill Stiegerwald of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that "the problem with doping in sports is that it is illegal... it seems to me that they (steroids) are enhancing (baseball). I don't know if Barry Bonds is a steroid user. But if he is, he's the biggest draw in all of sports today. How is that ruining the game?" When asked if drug use undermines fair competition and the spirit of sport, Fost said, "Absolutely not. What destroys fair competition is unequal access to things that affect performance." As these scholars and others understand, genetic enhancement raises difficult questions about the nature of human nature and the meaning of competitive sports. If history is any guide, the potential dangers and many unknowns of genetic enhancement won't deter elite athletes or weekend warriors from doping their genes to gain an edge. The guardians of purity in sport, burned by decades of abject failure, are marshaling their forces in an attempt to get out in front of what promises to be a daunting challenge. That challenge, and how it is met or not met, will help shape the climate in which the fight for broader drug policy reform takes place for years to come. Visit https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/354/sports.shtml to read Beitler's first "drugs and sports" installment for Drug War Chronicle.
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