Doping for gold

In many ways, the Summer Games now begun in Sydney perfectly fit the mold of the modern Olympics. Ten thousand earnest young athletes strive for individual glory and national pride. Billions of viewers tune in, gripped by sports they largely ignore for all but two weeks every four years. NBC actually fits a bit of coverage of those sports between touching profiles and whimsical features. The specter of drug abuse, testing and disgrace – individual and national – hangs over all.

From the cutting edge of science comes a warning that these Olympics, flawed as they are, may be the last in which there can be any confidence that what is on display is athletic prowess and not the latest advance in biochemistry. The next big thing, scientists say, is gene doping, a technique that will make the performance-enhancing drugs of today as quaint and obvious as Ben Gay.

Gene doping is the use of gene-spliced performance boosters. Instead of injecting synthetic hormones to increase endurance, strength or reflexes, cheaters of the not-too-distant future will be injecting human cells genetically engineered to prod their own bodies into producing those hormones. The old-fashioned synthetic hormones can be detected by simple, fairly inexpensive urine tests and blood scans and the offending athlete promptly disqualified. Detecting an abundance of chemicals produced by an athlete’s own body is very expensive and as difficult as it sounds. Legal scholars say the litigation potential is enormous for athletes disqualified because their own bodies produce the stuff that makes them stronger and faster.

The substances ripest for abuse at the cell level were developed for legitimate medical purposes. EPO, all the rage in sports where endurance counts, is crucial for those undergoing kidney dialysis or with certain blood diseases. Human growth hormone, which increases strength, holds great potential for those with muscular dystrophy. Countless lives can be made better, even saved, when the techniques of transplanting genetically engineered human cells are perfected, subjected to clinical trials and approved for use.

Of course, long before those techniques are perfected and approved, hundreds of athletes will have performed their own unofficial trials, some acting on their own, others at the urging of overzealous coaches and national sports committees. What new records will be set? What disastrous health consequences will result?

The International Olympic Committee seems, as usual, well behind the curve. Sydney marks the first real attempt by the new World Anti-Doping Agency to crack down on synthetic hormones, some six years after those substances became a significant problem in athletics. WADA, a joint venture by several Western governments and the IOC, came about as the result of government criticism of IOC foot-dragging.

Now that a significant effort to stop synthetic doping is being made, synthetic doping is passe. An opportunity to have pharmaceutical companies develop molecular markers that would expose athletes who engage in gene-doping failed when the IOC merely tried to shame the companies into it rather than offering to contribute toward the tens of millions of dollars new clinical trials would have cost.

Sydney certainly will not be the last Olympics. It may, however, be the last in which gold is produced by hard work, talent and sacrifice instead of alchemy.