Gene Doping: Introductory Notes
By Sarah Parker
Introductory Notes |
In the months leading up to the start of the 2004 Summer Olympics, newspapers and magazines were full of concerns about athletes using performance-enhancing drugs to run faster, jump higher, and throw farther. The International Olympics Committee has long been engaged in a “game of chemical cat-and-mouse” to identify performance-enhancing drugs and catch the athletes who use them. Unfortunately, repeated scandals have not decreased the appeal of drug use or “doping” to athletes for whom winning is the ultimate achievement (Longman, 2001). In recent years, sports authorities have begun to fear a new type of performance enhancement that would be far more difficult to detect and prevent than the usual drug-based methods of doping. As genetic engineering becomes more and more common, scientists worry that it is only a matter of time before athletes turn to gene doping, defined by the World Anti-Doping Agency as the “non-therapeutic use of genes, genetic elements, and/or cells that have the capacity to enhance athletic performance” (WADA, 2004). In other words, gene doping is the use of gene therapy techniques for enhancement rather than treatment. The ability to give a person synthetic genes that produce muscle-building proteins could change the lives of people with muscular dystrophy and other muscle-wasting disorders, but the potential for abuse of this technology by athletes has created a variety of ethical issues in both the scientific and athletic worlds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3493839.stm
Survey Results: What do Davidson College students think?
How have the media portrayed the issue?
What have scientists said about the potential abuse of their discoveries?
Survey Results: What do Davidson College students think about gene doping?
When asked who should have access to genetic enhancements such as muscle enhancement or weight loss, the 121 Davidson College students surveyed answered as follows:
51.2% thought only people suffering from genetic disorders should have access to genetic enhancements.
13.2% thought everyone should have access, including athletes.
24.8% thought the general public should have access, but not athletes.
84.3% thought that athletes should not have access, regardless of which other groups should.
8.3% thought no one should have access.
Except for the 8.3% who thought no one should be allowed access to genetic enhancements, Davidson students agreed that people suffering from genetic disorders should have access to such technologies. These statistics are consistent with a common theme in the students’ definitions of the “perfect” body; many students wrote that the “perfect” body should be “genetically healthy” or “without genetic defects.” Therapeutic genetic manipulations to correct the genetic “imperfections” that are severe enough to be called defects were acceptable to most of the students surveyed. About half of the students surveyed thought that therapeutic manipulations are the only acceptable use of these technologies. With this viewpoint, gene doping laws, regulations, and subsequent punishments for violations would have to be applied both to athletes and to members of the general public who might seek to use gene therapy to enhance a “genetically healthy” body.
It is worth noting that other components of Davidson students’ definitions of the “perfect” body varied greatly from very specific physical requirements for perfection (many students included “athletic,” “muscular,” or “in good shape” in their definitions) to a general feeling of happiness with the body’s appearance and abilities, regardless of societal standards. These findings help explain the observation that while most of the students surveyed agreed that athletes should not have access to genetic enhancements, they were more divided when it comes to the general public. Students who thought there are specific requirements for physical perfection were more likely to believe that genetic enhancements should be made available to the general public. Accordingly, 38.8% of students felt the general public should be allowed access to genetic enhancements. Students who thought perfection is attained when one is satisfied with one’s appearance and abilities, on the other hand, were less likely to think the general public should have access.
Perhaps the most interesting and even controversial finding of the survey was that of the students who thought genetic enhancements should be made available to the general public, the majority did not think athletes should have access to such technologies. A total of 24.8% of those surveyed fell into this category. Thus the moral dilemma that is the theme of this website emerges: how far may people go in their quest for the perfect body? As seen in the results of this survey, even the students of Davidson College were unable to answer this question decisively.
How have the media portrayed the issue?
Like most of the Davidson students surveyed, the media seem to disapprove rather strongly of the idea that athletes could use gene therapy techniques to enhance athletic performance. The media frown upon gene doping much as they do upon conventional doping methods, portraying gene doping as a new form of “high-tech cheating” among athletes (Sweeney, 2004). Although conservatives raise the occasional concerns about “playing God” by altering people’s genetic makeup, it’s not the technology itself that the media condemns. New advances in gene therapy are heralded as potential miracles for people suffering from genetic disorders. It is the prospective abuse of such beneficial technology that leads the media to label gene doping the “dark side” of gene therapy. Journalists bring up numerous ethical questions, all centering on the issue of enhancing abilities that would be considered normal prior to intervention (“Genetic Enhancement,” 2002). Again, this is a divisive issue. The general conclusion seems to be that genetic enhancement is something that must be regulated and, where athletes are concerned, prevented.
What have scientists said about the potential abuse of their discoveries?
Ronald Evans of the Salk Institute acknowledged that “athletes and elite runners would have an interest in [the ‘marathon’ mouse] because it might make their exercise more efficient…so there is a potential that athletes might want to abuse this compound” (“Marathon mouse,” 2004).
Dr. Arne Ljunqvist, an International Olympics Committee delegate, called gene doping a “common potential problem” (Longman, 2001).
Dr. H. Lee Sweeney, a physiologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, wrote in a Scientific American article, “Where winning is paramount, athletes will seize any opportunity to gain an extra few split seconds of speed or a small boost in endurance” (Sweeney, 2004).
Dr. Greg Whyte of the English Institute of Sport agreed, “When the rewards are very high, there will always be those individuals who are prepared to cheat” (Kinver, 2004).
Dr. Theodore Friedmann, director of the gene therapy program at the University of California at San Diego, asked, “What are the endpoints of manipulation? Is the question, How fully can we engineer the human body to do impossible things? If it is, what do you have at the end of that? Something that looks like a human, but is so engineered, so tuned, that it’s no longer going to do what the body is designed to do” (Longman, 2001).
Clearly, scientists have also expressed concerns about the potential abuse of techniques not intended for athletic enhancement. The scientists working to develop gene therapy treatments worry that athletes will exploit the results of their research For the most part, the scientific community seems resigned to that fact that athletes will someday use these techniques to gain a competitive edge in their sports, but most scientists do not condone it. Some scientists are already working on methods of detecting gene doping in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency or other anti-doping groups. Although not much has been said about the possibility of gene doping among the general public, scientists like Dr. Theodore Friedmann worry about the impact body “engineering” could have on our perceptions of humanity (Longman, 2001).
Questions or Comments: Email Dr. Verna Case
Davidson College Biology Department
Davidson College
This web page was produced as an assignment for an undergraduate course at Davidson College.
Introductory Notes |