Beijing Olympics warned of ‘gene doping’ threat (2008, Aug 5)

Beijing Olympics warned of ‘gene doping’ threat
A new generation of ‘genetically modified’ athletes could mar the Beijing Olympics as sportsmen and women go to new lengths to realise their goals.

By Telegraph staff
Last Updated: 2:36PM BST 05 Aug 2008


Keeping clean: A doping control area at the National Aquatics Centre prior to the Beijing Olympics Photo: Reuters
Leading British scientist Dr Andy Miah, who is currently in Beijing conducting research during the Games, claims that “gene doping” will become the latest headache for the sport.

Athletes will be able to improve their performance by inserting or inhaling foreign DNA. The process sees genes either injected into muscle of bone cells and their proteins fed into the tissue or red blood cells.

“In 2004, people were starting to talk about its use at the Athens Olympics,” Dr Miah says in the Evening Standard. “This year the case is even stronger that this will be the first genetically-modified Games. Many scientists will say it’s still not possible, but I’m not taking this for granted.

“We need to assume that it’s happening. It’s already feasible.”

While the threat at this year’s Games is thought to be minimal, Dr Miah fears London 2012 could feel the full force of the latest and most damaging threat to the sport.

He said: “London 2012 should be watching Beijing very carefully to see what’s possible. There has never been a ‘clean’ Olympics.

“The main problem for sports is that there are so many technologies that are under the radar of antidoping that its policies do little more than to point us to successes of antidoping testing.”

The ‘genetically modified’ process was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency list of banned substances in 2003, but today’s claims are sure to put WADA on full alert.

A representative of WADA, Frederic Donze, said: “We have been preparing for gene doping since 2002.

“We have to believe that athletes will try anything to get an edge and this might occur at the Olympics and we work on that basis.”

Beijing: the first genetically modified Olympics? (2008, Aug 4)

Beijing: the first genetically modified Olympics?
“The curtain will rise on what many experts believe could prove to be the first genetically modified Olympics.

For the unscrupulous or overdriven Olympic athlete, the banned practice of doping by taking hormones or other drugs to enhance athletic prowess may seem so last century. The next thing in doping is more profound and more dangerous. It called gene doping: permanently inserting strength- or endurance-boosting genes into DNA.

Once you put that gene in, it’s there for the rest of that person’s life, says Larry Bowers, a clinical chemist at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in Colorado Springs, Colo. You can’t go back and fish it out.

Scientists developed the technology behind gene doping as a promising way to treat genetic diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and the bubble boy immune deficiency syndrome. This experimental medical technology called gene therapy has begun to emerge from the pall of early failures and fatalities in clinical trials. As gene therapy begins to enjoy some preliminary successes, scientists at the World Anti-Doping Agency, which oversees drug testing for the Olympics, have started to worry that dopers might now see abuse of gene therapy in sport as a viable option, though the practice was banned by WADA in 2003.

Gene therapy has now broken out from what seemed to be too little progress and has now shown real therapies for a couple diseases, and more coming, says Theodore Friedmann, a gene therapy expert at the University of California, San Diego and chairman of WADA’s panel on gene doping.

While gene therapy research has begun making great strides, the science of detecting illicit use of gene therapy in sport is only now finding its legs. To confront the perceived inevitability of gene doping, Friedmann and other scientists have started in recent years to explore the problem of detecting whether an athlete has inserted a foreign gene an extra copy that may be indistinguishable from the natural genes into his or her DNA.

It’s proving to be a formidable challenge. Genetic makeup varies from person to person, and world-class athletes are bound to have some natural genetic endowments that other people lack. Somehow, gene-doping tests must distinguish between natural genetic variation among individuals and genes inserted artificially and the distinction must stand up in court.

Scientists are fighting genetics with genetics, so to speak, enlisting the latest technologies for gene sequencing or for profiling the activity of proteins to find the telltale signs of gene doping. Some techniques attempt the daunting search for the foreign gene itself, like looking for a strand of hay in an enormous haystack.”

This is what living in a culture of greed, competition, and winning above all instead of fairness and loving what you do is doing to people. Even to the point of inserting this foreign DNA and not knowing for sure what it will do to your body. So we eat genetically modified food (without our knowledge) and now can genetically modify our own bodies all to profit those who don’t care about the affects this is having on us… and athletes that are women who do this and get pregnant afterwards … what risks would their children now face? Is winning and $$$ and endorsements REALLY all that important? So what will the new trend be: Bodies by Monsanto?

No gene therapy for athletes allowed in China (2008, Jul 25)

Ministry of Health: No gene therapy for athletes allowed in China

www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-25 01:03:17

BEIJING, July 24 (Xinhua) — China has never approved any hospital to offer performance-enhancing stem-cell therapy, a Ministry of Health official said here on Thursday.

He made the remarks in response to a German TV report that some Chinese hospitals offered what is described as performance-enhancing gene therapy treatment.

“China has never allowed medical institutions or staff to provide stem-cell therapy aimed at improving athletes’ performance,” he said.

Any medical institution or medical worker doing so would be severely punished under the law, he stressed.

The official added he welcomed media scrutiny and clues to help the government’s anti-doping efforts.

In gene doping, athletes put a second copy of certain cells into their bodies to try to increase muscle mass or improve endurance.

As early as March 2004 China had implemented its Anti-Doping Code. Over the past two years, the country had launched several special investigations into performance-enhancing drugs to ensure a fair Olympics.

In these aggressive campaigns, 23 companies were punished for illegal drug trade, or selling sports performance enhancers that shouldn’t have been available over the counter since last year.

In addition, three drug makers were ordered to suspend production of relevant drugs, while another 18 had their licenses revoked. Another 321 websites containing illegal drug trading information were shut down.