Gene doping: New threat in sports

The newest—and perhaps most troubling—trend in the world of athletic enhancement today seems to be gene doping, says a Newsweek article. Gene doping involves modifying an athlete’s DNA, or having them inject or inhale foreign DNA, to make them bigger, stronger and faster. “It’s harder to detect than most drugs, which makes it all the more desired by cheaters looking to prosper,” says Jamie Reno, author of the feature.

The issue assumes increasing importance as newer instances of players’ suspension on doping charges come to light. Officials of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ensured unprecedented steps to keep the Beijing Olympics clean. The number of tests for banned substances performed at these Games was the most ever.

With gene doping, a person’s genetic makeup is actually changed by injecting genes into muscle or bone cells, creating proteins that then enter the tissue or blood. The article cites a German TV report on the availability of gene doping in China, which aired just a few days before the Olympics, and stunned anti-doping experts. It involved a reporter, posing as an American swimming coach, meeting a doctor who is the head of the gene-therapy department of an unnamed Chinese hospital. The hidden-camera report shows the doctor, with his face blurred, offering gene-therapy treatment to the undercover reporter in return for $24,000.

The TV programme wouldn’t have come as a surprise to scientists studying gene doping, like Dr. Ted Friedmann, director of the Center for Molecular Genetics at the University of California. “I don’t know how it was arranged, or what level of hospital this was, but it supports the idea that the world of athletics is very aware of gene doping and already pursuing it,” says Friedmann, who is the president of the American Society of Gene Therapy, and working closely with WADA to find ways to detect gene doping and, ideally, prevent it from becoming rampant.

The article quotes Friedmann as saying that WADA has established a research programme that plans to design new tests for gene doping, based on technologies developed around the Human Genome Project. Friedmann believes there are effective ways of testing tissue, blood or urine to see if the body has been genetically altered.

The issue, however, assumes some grey shades as well. For instance, as gene therapy becomes more commonplace in medical treatment, many athletes may undergo such procedures legitimately, and that will show up on any test. Friedmann says these athletes should be allowed to apply for an exemption.