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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
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The First Genetically Modified Olympics
Widely expected by 2008, genetic doping could make its first appearance at this year's summer games
By Shannon Klie Lee Sweeney is a busy man. Ever since the University of Pennsylvania geneticist discovered that inserting a specific gene could increase muscle performance in rats, he's been swamped by calls and emails begging for treatment. And anyone who doubts that athletes would alter their genes to win gold need only speak with him—if they can reach him. With hundreds of athletes wanting to take part in human trials for the gene therapy, which won't start for at least five years, Sweeney's had little time to speak with anyone, and even had to turn down an interview for this report. Over the years, many athletes have felt pressure to use banned performance-enhancing drugs, including anabolic steroids, if only to be able to compete with those who are. In an attempt to beat the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) drug tests, some athletes have turned to laboratories that produce and distribute undetectable performance-enhancing drugs. But as science advances, so does the potential for undetectable enhancements, and the next big thing isn't drugs but gene therapy: Manipulating DNA to enhance abilities in a nearly undetectable manner—in essence, changing the body itself to be stronger, faster and overall better for athletics. WADA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have conservatively guessed that some athletes may use gene therapy at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. "Whether it's a reality in the real world of athletics no one knows yet but we all think it will be a reality in the reasonably near future," says Theodore Friedmann, a member of WADA's health medicine research committee and an expert on gene transfer therapy. But while the technology is new, and mostly untested on human subjects, athletes are willing to put their lives on the line for the chance to win gold, meaning that genetic doping could become a concern sooner than most people think. "I think it's a concern for this year's Olympics," says Andy Miah, a professor at the University of Paisley, Scotland and author of Genetically Modified Athletes. Wakeup call The recent BALCO scandals, says Miah, were a wakeup call that showed there are many forms of performance enhancement that anti-doping authorities know nothing about. American sprinter Kelli White and the San Francisco-based lab BALCO are at the center of this doping scandal, which involves several high-profile members of the US track and field team and their usage of undetectable performance-enhancing drugs. White used a synthetic form of the endurance-enhancing hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which is banned by WADA, to stimulate the production of her body's red blood cells and increase her endurance at last year's track and field world championships. It's a sign of things to come, because soon athletes won't have to take a synthetic compound—they'll be able to alter their bodies' own EPO production using gene therapy. Gene therapy involves the injection of therapeutic genes into a subject's cells to replace faulty or nonexistent genes or to augment the level of gene activity, which controls how much of a protein—such as EPO—is produced. A vector, typically an altered virus, delivers the genes to target cells. In 1999, James Wilson and his team at the University of Pennsylvania, in an effort to help kidney patients awaiting transplants, successfully injected parts of the EPO gene into the leg muscles of monkeys to help them maintain a steady supply of red blood cells. Once the technology has been tested on humans, athletes in endurance sports such as cycling and long-distance running could use Wilson's technique to increase their natural production of EPO and give them a nearly undetectable advantage. Since the EPO discovery, there have been many more genetic breakthroughs with huge implications for sports. Sweeney's gene therapy discovery, which has made him the target of so many athlete inquiries, came earlier this year while looking for a treatment for muscular dystrophy (a disease that causes the progressive degeneration of a person's muscles). Sweeney and his team discovered that by injecting the gene for insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) into rats, the animals were able to better build and retain muscle. Rats injected with IGF-1 increased muscle size and strength by 15% to 30%, while rats injected with the gene and then put through ladder-climbing exercises doubled their muscle strength. The study results, published in the March issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, indicate that if healthy people inject IGF-1 their muscles would get stronger without doing additional exercise. And for elite athletes, the benefits could be even more profound, making the effects of training last longer and helping them overcome injury more easily. Increasingly, researchers are uncovering the genetic basis of athletic excellence. Last year, for example, Kathryn North at the Children's Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, Australia discovered that the ACTN3 R allele occurs more frequently in sprinters, while the X allele occurs more frequently in endurance athletes. ACTN3 R yields the protein a-actinin-3, which North and colleagues conclude activates the "fast-twitch" muscles that give people extra power for brief and vigorous bursts of activity. "Our findings in ACTN3 genotype suggest individuals have a genetic predisposition that affects muscle performance," says North. While there's currently no gene therapy treatment involving ACTN3, if one were developed it could have the potential to enhance athletic ability in humans. And the discovery could also help guide the choices of young athletes in determining events for which they're best suited. Such research has made the prospect of genetic doping a near-term concern for the IOC. This March, Bengt Saltin, a member of the IOC science committee, cut the expected timeline for athletes to use gene therapy in half after Sweeney released the results of his IGF-1 research. Instead of 10 years, as the IOC medical commission chair Arne Ljungqvist estimated last year at an anti-doping conference in Sweden, Saltin said that athletes could attempt gene doping in the next four years—in time for the 2008 Olympics. As researchers make more discoveries, the timeline could shorten even more. Regulating the inevitable Despite all the research, however, gene therapy is still potentially deadly. An American patient in a gene therapy trial for a liver disorder died, for example, and two European children treated with inserted genes for immune deficiency developed leukemia. For at least the next four years, the risk to athletes attempting to gene dope will still be very real, according to Shawn Winnett, communications coordinator at the Australian Sports Drug Agency. "Even by 2008 the technology would be raw and could lead to disastrous health effects in offending athletes," says Winnett. According to Friedmann, these risks are only tolerable if one is treating an already life-threatening disease. "To expose healthy young athletes to those risks at the moment is foolhardy and unethical," he says. To address the risks, countries have set up regulatory mechanisms. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institute of Health (NIH), for example, have extensive oversight mechanisms for gene therapy. But such mechanisms are often limited. While the US mechanisms come into play when an institution receives federal money for genetics research, for example, they don't apply to private companies. "To their credit, nonacademic centers have voluntarily gone through the NIH oversight system because it's in everybody's best interest to do things right at the outset of a new field," says Friedmann. Richard Pound, WADA chairman, says that the existing protocols, in all countries, are very strict and that only projects with therapeutic applications are approved for clinical trials. "Of course, the vast majority of drugs used in doping were originally designed for therapeutic usage," says Pound. Protocols or not, the risks associated with gene therapy in its current incarnation, as well as the risks of breaking regulations, might not be enough to deter some people from setting up black market labs to provide genetic enhancement for a fee. Sweeney told USA Today in March that some athletes would be willing to spend US$100,000 for a new set of muscles and that much money is very attractive, especially to scientists in the former Soviet Union who have lost most of their research funding. But black market labs could be built pretty much anywhere. Friedmann points out that in the 1980s people thought the Soviet Union would be the first to develop undetectable steroids but the San Francisco-based BALCO proves that Americans are just as likely to do so. "Black market labs could be any place where there's money, technology, sport pressure and a will," says Friedmann. "That doesn't exclude anybody as far as I can tell." Pound agrees and says that this kind of illicit work for personal gain seems to be a function of human nature. "We will just have to do what we can to detect the labs and get them closed," he says. It could take anywhere from $100,000 to a million dollars to set up a black market gene therapy lab. All the general approaches are published in the scientific literature and most graduate level molecular biology students could perform the procedures. However to devise a first class, ethical clinical program would be difficult and expensive, and it would involve restrictions that would take years to satisfy. "To do it right would be difficult and very expensive," says Friedmann. "To do it wrong would be easy and cheap." So WADA, the IOC and various national anti-doping agencies are preparing for the inevitable: when the threat of gene doping becomes a reality in international sports. In an effort to stay ahead of the quickly advancing technology, WADA added cellular and genetic forms of doping to its list of banned substances and methods last year. Gene therapy, however, is nearly impossible to detect because it works at a cellular level to augment the body's natural cellular processes. Currently a muscle biopsy is the only viable test for genetic manipulations, and then only for genetic therapies that act directly on muscles, such as the IGF-1 treatment. "Muscle biopsies in general have been used in clinical settings," says Friedmann. "But clearly no athlete is going to do that, nor should they be pressured to do something that invasive." WADA and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) are researching and developing new genetic approaches, such as imaging and molecular methods, to detect evidence of genetic enhancement, but Pound would like to be able to do more. "I would like to make genetic manipulation for performance enhancement illegal," he says, "as well as being prohibited within the rules of sport." Legalize it? Not everyone agrees with Pound, however. Some want to see gene therapy become a useful and legitimate training tool for athletes. Miah, the author of Genetically Modified Athletes, says that the IOC can't treat genetic modification as it does other forms of doping. "It's not sufficient simply to prohibit this technology in sport," says Miah, "and hope that will be the end of the issue." Given the threat of black market labs and the lack of a valid method of detection, Miah says that prohibition isn't the best option. "Increasingly, genetic modification will be seen as a valuable aspect of our society," says Miah, "promoting health and benefiting humanity." Miah points out that genetic modification is just one more tool at athletes' disposal, no different than an altitude chamber that increases the concentration of their red blood cells to improve their endurance. He says the criteria for distinguishing between fair and unfair technologies haven't been addressed by international sport bodies since the beginning of the anti-doping movement 40 years ago. Some argue that genetic manipulation undermines the anti-doping position that doping creates an inequality amongst competitors. There are natural variations in genes among people and allowing athletes access to gene therapy could actually level the inherently uneven playing field. This argument, however, rests on there being equal access to gene therapy. Even if international sports authorities agreed that gene therapy is a valid treatment and training option for athletes, the therapies, as with other medical treatments, would be under the jurisdictions of individual countries. And access to medical treatment is rarely fair and equitable. "This unfairness will be replicated in genetic delivery and gene therapy settings," says Friedmann. "The distribution of the therapies will be inequitable." Some gene therapy, however, will almost certainly be accepted. Gene therapy will likely soon be a legitimate treatment option for a variety of injuries such as muscle, tendon and nerve damage—all of which afflict athletes—and it would be unfair to deprive athletes of effective therapies. So if WADA persists in banning genetic enhancement, it will have to develop a list of tests and regulations to delineate between treatment and enhancement, just as it did with banned drugs. Friedmann expects that WADA will make some of the genetic technology available to athletes through therapeutic exemptions. "But when athletes take advantage of these kinds of therapies," he says, "it should be done openly and in full view of the regulatory bodies in sport." But while Friedmann thinks that it's inevitable that genetic therapies will be incorporated into international sports, he worries about their effect on the nature of sport. He says that instead of a feat of athleticism being the result of skill, training and dedication, in the future people will wonder if it's a simple product of bioengineering. "It's a threat to sport as we know it," he says. Miah disagrees, and says that in some ways genetic enhancement is actually consistent with the nature of sport. "Elite sport is premised on performance enhancement," he says. "Sport is a technology and genetic modification is consistent with its most basic values." Fair play´s farewell
Each week the English language service of Radio
Netherlands presents Amsterdam Forum - a current
affairs discussion programme hosted by Andy Clark First there were steroids, then designer steroids, blood doping, hormones and a host of stimulants; now enter a new champion in the illicit world of the sports drugs cheat – genetic doping. It may sound like science fiction but the idea of genetically modified athletes surpassing previous record performances by big margins may be on us by the time the Olympics come around in Beijing in 2008. Despite the unknown risks athletes are already queuing up for a new doping regime that will leave previous performance enhancers trailing in the dust. And as if to answer the potential cheats' wildest fantasies, genetic doping is undetectable using current testing methods.
Our discussion programme Amsterdam Forum returned this week and focused on the new doping scourge. Host Andy Clark was joined by Professor Lee Sweeney, Chairman of the Department of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and Olivier de Hon from the Netherlands Centre for Doping Affairs. "I think it's going to create chaos if it really does begin to enter sport and I fear for the impact 20 years from now. I don't know what the Olympic ideal is really going to look like," said Professor Sweeney. Professor Sweeney is involved in gene therapy designed to help the elderly and ill, in particular his work focuses on re-generating muscle tissue. His focus is on wasting diseases, due to ageing or muscular dystrophy, and he's developed strategies to allow muscles to get bigger and stronger to combat losses. This is the process that is now drawing the attention of those seeking to gain a competitive edge in sport. "If you put this in a normal person it's not gene therapy anymore it's genetic enhancement, or gene doping, because it also makes their muscles get bigger and stronger and repair faster. It's obviously something an athlete would be very interested in," said Professor Sweeney. Tests in mice and rats conducted at the Pennsylvania University lab showed remarkable gains. The mice tended to live longer and didn't lose strength at all, right up until death. Super rats The rats were put on an exercise regime after being genetically enhanced. After weightlifting - carrying weights up a ladder - they were shown to have gained twice the strength that the non-enhanced rats had. Other benefits shown in the experiments included an amazing ability to recover after injury. Rats with torn muscles - they'd been deliberately made to carry too much weight - were shown to make a full recovery, whereas their un-enhanced colleagues suffered permanent scar tissue and a loss of strength. Olivier De Hon from the Dutch Centre for Doping Affairs said he viewed doping as one of the greatest threats to sport. "Gene doping would certainly be a big threat . . . its is not detectable as such, you can detect some things that gene doping triggers, certain proteins that it makes or other effects. But it is not direct evidence, we have to wait for a really good detection." Jim Barrett from Sydney in Australia e-mailed to ask if "the clinically testable traces of performance-enhancing gene therapy in a particular person will eventually vanish in the same way that the clinically testable traces of conventional unsporting pharmaceutical doses are notorious for vanishing after a period of cleanliness." Professor Sweeney: "Because we're using viruses to put the genes in, the body would make some anti-bodies to the virus that you could be able to detect for a period of time, but the listener is right, they will over time disappear and leave no trace that the virus was there." Olivier de Hon: "As I was informed you can only find those viruses as long as you know what kind of viruses you are looking for, but people who do not want to be detected, they are quite impossible to detect." The material for gene doping comes after DNA is taken and then a synthetic gene is engineered to make the protein to be used for enhancement. Unknown dangers It's estimated that genetic doping could be upon us within the next few years. The technical know-how is out there according to the experts, and its just a question of whether or not someone will shelve the ethical concerns and start to offer genetic enhancements for money. "It would not only be for athletes but also for the elderly who could afford to pay for it – that's what I would be concerned about. There are enough people trained in it now it's just a matter of whether some of those people have the ethics that prevent them from going there." As for the dangers, they are unknown. The long-term effects of gene alteration have yet to be thoroughly researched. At the moment gene therapies are offered only to patients with life threatening conditions, they have a lot to gain and any downsides are offset. "In a healthy athlete, why would you want to take those risks when you don't even know what they are? On the other hand, I've been contacted by enough athletes who told me they don't care what they are," said Professor Sweeney. "The plan of action is to try and find some sort of way to test for it, allocating research money for it and working together with experts like Professor Sweeney," said Olivier de Hon. "The way I understand it is that we have four years, maybe five, to come up with a solution." Building better bodies
Wed, Sep. 01, 2004 For a glimpse of what post-human athletes may look like beginning in the 2012 or 2016 Olympics, consider an obscure breed of cattle called the Belgian Blue. Belgian Blues are unlike any cows you've ever seen. They have a genetic mutation that means they do not have effective myostatin, a substance that curbs muscle growth. A result is that Belgian Blues are all bulging muscles without a spot of fat, like bovine caricatures of Arnold Schwarzenegger. These mutants also may point to the future of humans, particularly athletes. Gene therapies are being developed that would block myostatin in humans, and they offer immense promise in treating muscular dystrophy and the frailty that comes with aging. But once this gene therapy becomes available for people who really need it, it'll take about 10 minutes before athletes surreptitiously are using it, particularly because, in contrast to today's doping, gene therapy leaves no trace in the blood or urine. The standard human shape would become different, and anyone with money could look like a body builder. As H. Lee Sweeney, chairman of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, wrote in a fascinating article in July's Scientific American, the Athens Games may wind up being "one of its last Olympic Games without genetically enhanced athletes." Even more important, gene therapy goes to the heart of an issue that will turn our species upside down in the coming decades. We are beginning to understand our own operating system - genes - and we're gaining the ability to try to "improve" our genetic endowment. If we do so, the ramifications could be as enormous as when our ancestors first crawled out of the slime to live on land. Genetic tinkering gives me the willies. My concern is not so much the details of blocking myostatin (although Belgian Blue calves are so muscled that their mothers are at high risk of dying while giving birth), as with the possibility that we irreversibly will change what it is to be human. Geneticists have tried to improve apples over the past 50 years, producing larger, prettier species that just aren't as tasty or as interesting as they used to be. It would be a tragedy if we did to humans what we've done to apples. Yet gene therapy also offers immense promise. Injecting genes to block myostatin could help not only those with muscular dystrophy but also anyone suffering the routine loss of musculature that comes with aging. Instead of breaking their hips and limping about on walkers, nonagenarians could run road races. So far, the experiments have been very impressive. Sweeney and his team injected mice with genes that resulted in muscles 15 percent to 30 percent larger than in other mice. And when middle-aged mice were injected with the gene, their muscles did not weaken in old age. Other gene therapies are being developed that would prod the human body to produce more red blood cells, a huge benefit to athletes. In monkeys and baboons, these therapies led the red blood cell count to just about double in 10 weeks. A small number of humans have natural genetic mutations that are similar, and these people appear to live normally and to be exceptional athletes. For example, Eero Mantyranta of Finland was a three-time gold medalist in cross-country skiing Olympics in the 1960s, and his family later turned out to have a genetic mutation that produced extremely high levels of red blood cells. Likewise, The New England Journal of Medicine in June documented a human version of the Belgian Blues, a boy with a genetic mutation that interferes with myostatin. From the moment he was born, he had extraordinary muscling, and at age 4 he can hold a 3-kilogram dumbbell in each hand with his arms extended. A European weight-lifting champion is said to have a similar mutation. Perhaps the most important and complex decision in the history of our species is approaching: in what ways should we improve our genetic endowment? Yet we are neither focused on this question nor adequately schooled to resolve it. So we desperately need greater scientific literacy, and it's past time for a post-Sputnik style revitalization of science education, especially genetics, to help us figure out if we want our descendants to belong to the same species as we do. Kristof writes for the New York Times. 0 4 - 1 2 - 2 0 0 5 Pound opens gene doping conference
By STEPHAN NASSTROM STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Anti-doping officials and scientists are meeting again to prepare for what is likely to be the next generation of cheats in sports - gene dopers. While nobody knows if gene doping exists, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chairman Dick Pound of Montreal said he could not rule out the possibility.
"Anything is possible, we don't believe it does but you can't exclude it," Pound said Saturday night on the eve of the two-day 2nd WADA Symposium on Gene Doping. "We don't have any tests that everybody in the scientific community approved, to say 'yes, if we find x, y and z, that means genetic doping has occurred.' That's one of the purposes of the update at this symposium. Where are we in the development of the kind of test that will identify this?" Gene doping involves transferring genes directly into human cells to blend into an athlete's own DNA to enhance muscle growth and increase strength or endurance. Unlike steroids or drugs, the added genes are not detectable yet. "There are some experiments that one of the scientists who is here in Stockholm has done," Pound said. "Playing with the genes, he has increased muscle bulk in laboratory animals by 15 per cent with no exercise, nothing." If you are trying to throw a shot put 20 metres or 40 metres, that would be a great interest to you. "That's the kind of thing we have to anticipate," Pound said. "Anything that might assist the body to use the oxygen better, might increase endurance." ' "So we have to be alert to that, meet with these scientists, find out what they're doing, figure out whether some of those applications might be interesting for people who want to cheat in sport and then work on devising tests." Some 50 leading scientists in the field of gene technology and gene therapy from around the world will attend the conference at Karolinska Institutet, one of Europe's largest medical universities.
Professor Arne Ljungqvist, a former second-in-command at Karolinska Institutet and an International Olympic Committee member, says there has been much speculation about gene doping. "Is there already gene doping going on? What will happen with the next Olympic Games? Is it possible that we'll see the first games in Turin?" Ljungqvist said. "I believe not. What about Beijing, and what about the future? So there is a need for some clear statement from a real group of experts. Where are we? What are the possibilities? What are the risks? And what can we do?" Ljungqvist believes gene doping can be detected in the future and he expects that the conference will deliver a message to possible cheaters on Monday, when IOC chairman Jacques Rogge will attend. "The misunderstanding that seems to be out there is that gene doping will not be detected," Ljungqvist said. "That is not the case. The case is rather how and by what means will it be detected." The symposium is organized by WADA, the Swedish Sports Confederation and Karolinska Institutet. 1 0 - 0 2 - 2 0 0 6 Researchers scent blood on trail of new cheats
The Times HERE are three reasons why the sports world is so frightened of the grim new world of illegal performance-enhancement better known as “gene doping”. First, the science involved is not particularly advanced and, second, the equipment required to produce gene therapies does not have to be particularly advanced, either. We are not talking state-of-the-art laboratories, designer equipment or egg-heads in lab coats making advances unknown to man. We are talking half-decent molecular biologists and a useful bit of DIY. Third, those who toy with gene doping to gain an illegal advantage do so at the risk of their lives. And this is not scaremongering. The fact is that, despite decades of research, only one gene therapy, in China, has been approved beyond the trial stage for use by the healthcare market. In 2000, gene therapy trials were carried out in Paris on a number of young children who suffered from severely deficient immunity systems and two developed leukaemia as a result. The whole science then went backwards, yet gene doping is suddenly upon the globe as a form of cheating in sport. This is known because of a court case in Germany in which e-mails between two coaches revealed knowledge and use of Repoxygen, a gene therapy. “Repoxygen is hard to get,” one coach wrote to the other. “Please give me new instructions soon so that I can order the product before Christmas.” Repoxygen is a substance that was never produced commercially, never getting beyond prototype stage. The testing for it never went beyond (successful) trials on mice. Yet it has found its way into sport. And no one will know if it finds its way into the Winter Olympics, which open tomorrow, because no one can yet test for it. If this is a chilling example of the cheats getting ahead of the doping police, an eloquent response is being developed in Britain, in a village outside Newmarket. HFL is a commercial laboratory, one of the two in the UK accredited to perform dope tests, and it is funded by the World AntiDoping Agency to research gene therapy and to work out how to catch the new generation of cheats. HFL, it seems, is on the scent. But this, first, is how easy it is for the cheats to get ahead. “It’s a relatively straightforward technology,” Phil Teale, HFL’s head of research, said. “Gene implantation materials could be made by a PhD in molecular biology in a university laboratory. That’s very standard equipment and you’re not talking about a team of 40 people to help. This is why the anti-doping movement is particularly worried.” These, furthermore, are the risks. “You could make a gene implantation system, but you really wouldn’t know the health threats,” Teale said. Steve Maynard, the director of drug surveillance, said: “Sadly, we do know that individuals will go to extreme lengths to gain an advantage. And the point is that people in sport are very aware of the advances in medicine and are prepared to take big health risks to make use of them.” The Schwarzenegger mice, for example. These are large rodents, famous within the science, created by Dr Lee Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania with the introduction of a gene that stimulates muscle growth. Similar mice have been engineered at the Salk Institute in California, where there is a mouse called Lance (as in Armstrong), whose genetic make-up was altered to produce high levels of endurance muscle. Lance can run for twice as long on a treadmill as normal mice. The temptations are obvious to the ethically challenged corners of sport. However, there are pitfalls. In producing extra muscle in this way, the body’s other organs do not grow simultaneously, so they struggle to cope. At best, we would be engineering something more dangerous than acromegaly, or “gigantism”, a pituitary problem suffered by the likes of Richard Kiel (Jaws in the Bond movies) and Carel Struycken (Lurch in the Addams Family films). These are big men with health issues, yet more healthy than the Schwarzenegger mice, whose skeletons did not grow in proportion with their muscle and had shorter lifespans. This explains why such gene therapy has yet to be used in healthcare. However, it did not stop the laboratories in California and Pennsylvania receiving a large number of communications from the sports world. Offers to be their human guinea pigs were common. Sweeney had a high-school American football coach offering his entire team. “This is a huge leap of faith,” Maynard said. “Here is a therapy being developed, it is in clinical trial, has many unpleasant side-effects and is considered too dangerous to be considered legitimate therapy. Yet that doesn’t stop people in sport speculating that it might be useful.” Teale said: “Everything we’ve seen shows that when anything comes on to the market, people abuse it.” Here is what HFL plans to do about it. The Eureka moment came for Teale in the lab in November. “Your body is permanently trying to keep things in balance,” he said. “If you change that balance through genetic manipulation, other proteins are increased or decreased to try to get the body back into stasis.” It was in November, when comparing one post-gene manipulation blood sample to a clean one, that he discovered a way of differentiating. “That was a pretty good moment,” he said. Maynard said: “There is a very big prize here. Not only may we have a solution to gene doping, we might get a solution to many others. If people are taking other unknown substances, that will also alter the body’s natural chemistry and we will pick that up, too. It’s potentially very exciting. This is genuine groundbreaking research.” The prize, then, is a test that may expose every doper, whatever they are taking. It sounds magnificent and sounds as if it is needed immediately. Which takes us to the race: the dopers versus HFL. HFL hopes to be over the finish line before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but says that 2012 is a safer bet. Until then, the gene dopers are playing a very dangerous game. HFL’s research is being carried out in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University and Royal Free and UCL Medical School |
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