Human Genetic Engineering: Chapter 7, Gene Doping in Sports

Dr. Bob Goldman, founder of the U.S. National Academy of Sports Medicine, has been researching athlete’s attitudes to performance-enhancing drugs since 1983. They haven’t changed significantly. His first survey covered 198 Olympic-class athletes, from various disciplines. He asked them two hypothetical questions:

If you were offered a drug that guaranteed both that you will win and that you won’t get caught, would you take it? 195 of 198 (98 percent) said yes.
If the drug had side-effects so that you were certain to win for five years but then you would die, would you take it? 103 of 198 (52 percent) said yes.

If Goldman’s sample is typical — and it certainly seems to be, from his subsequent surveys — then more than half of all world-class athletes will accept not just a risk but the certainty of death, if they get success first. Some of the people he has asked were only 16 years old. As he says, "To be willing to die at 21 is a serious psychological mindset that must be addressed."

The short-term thinking of highly motivated athletes makes a mockery of informed consent (see Box 7.1). And it’s not just an issue at the professional level. In the same week that Professor Sweeney (see below) announced that he had genetically engineered mice to be abnormally muscular, he got a call from a high school football coach, who wanted to pump up his whole team. Then a wrestling coach. And the calls kept coming, every week for months, mostly from wrestlers and weightlifters. ...

	CHAPTER 7 GENE DOPING IN SPORTS

	Appropriate candidates for experimental, and potential dangerous, new procedures can be hard to find. And yet there is a group of people who are willing, indeed eager, to try anything that promises to enhance their natural abilities — athletes. Some lines of research with potential medical value could also result in serious abuse by athletes, with unknown but quite possibly fatal long-term consequences. Gene doping might make a mockery of sports as we know them. This chapter's section titles, below, are followed by a list of the text boxes excerpts from the section about athletes' attitudes the annotated FURTHER READING list, which includes links to Free Documents from the Web There are many more resources in the Appendix.

	HEALTHY VOLUNTEERS DRUG ABUSE BY ATHLETES THE BALCO SCANDAL GENES AND ATHLETES GENE DOPING? MIGHTY MICE AND RATS MYOSTATIN IN MICE AND BULLS AND PEOPLE MARATHON MICE DEAD MONKEYS LEGALIZE IT? FURTHER READING BOX 7.1 Lyle Alzado BOX 7.2 The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) BOX 7.3 The WADA Anti-Doping Code BOX 7.4 Sprinters and Marathoners

	DRUG ABUSE BY ATHLETES Dr. Bob Goldman, founder of the U.S. National Academy of Sports Medicine, has been researching athlete’s attitudes to performance-enhancing drugs since 1983. They haven’t changed significantly. His first survey covered 198 Olympic-class athletes, from various disciplines. He asked them two hypothetical questions: If you were offered a drug that guaranteed both that you will win and that you won’t get caught, would you take it? 195 of 198 (98 percent) said yes. If the drug had side-effects so that you were certain to win for five years but then you would die, would you take it? 103 of 198 (52 percent) said yes. If Goldman’s sample is typical — and it certainly seems to be, from his subsequent surveys — then more than half of all world-class athletes will accept not just a risk but the certainty of death, if they get success first. Some of the people he has asked were only 16 years old. As he says, "To be willing to die at 21 is a serious psychological mindset that must be addressed." The short-term thinking of highly motivated athletes makes a mockery of informed consent (see Box 7.1). And it’s not just an issue at the professional level. In the same week that Professor Sweeney (see below) announced that he had genetically engineered mice to be abnormally muscular, he got a call from a high school football coach, who wanted to pump up his whole team. Then a wrestling coach. And the calls kept coming, every week for months, mostly from wrestlers and weightlifters. ...

	FURTHER READING Free Documents from the Web Links were checked and functioning as of 5/09/05; they are supposed to open in new windows. Please report broken ones. Stuart Stevens, "Drug Test," Outside, 11/03, is a fascinating and very detailed account of self-medicating by a talented amateur athlete, which continues for 10 subsequent pages. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) website includes the regularly updated "Prohibited List," fact sheets and other reports. Winning at Any Cost: Doping in Olympic Sports, by the CASA National Commission on Sports and Substance Abuse, is a major, official Report (113 pages, 1.8mb as a pdf), funded in part by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. Diane Kightlinger, "Citius, Altius, Fortius—Purius? Doping and Olympic Athletes," Update, the magazine of the New York Academy of Sciences, 08–09/04 Sal Ruibal, "Tackling Longtime Issue of Drugs No. 2 on Sports Changes Wish List," USA Today, 09/09/04 Tim Radford, "Gene Cheats: The New Risk Posed To World Sport," London Guardian, 02/17/04 Gregory M. Lamb, "Will Gene-Altered Athletes Kill Sport?" Christian Science Monitor, 08/23/04