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Gene Doping: Genetically Engineered Athletes
securitas writes "With the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics about to begin, games officials are on the lookout for the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes who want to gain an edge over their competitors. Scientific American's H. Lee Sweeney reports on sports officials who are looking to the near future with fear, anticipating a new, undetectable kind of doping that threatens to transform the fundamental nature of sports: gene doping (single-page view). The technology uses new 'therapies that give patients a synthetic gene, which can last for years, producing high amounts of naturally occurring muscle-building chemicals. The chemicals are indistinguishable from their natural counterparts and are only generated locally in the muscle tissue .... so officials will have nothing to detect in a blood or urine test.'
The article from the July 2004 issue includes diagrams by Jen Christiansen on the importance of skeletal muscles that provide athletes' power and how gene doping works.
Is the future of competitive sports an elite cadre of genetically engineered athletes?"
I was speaking with a friend the other day about doping and the olympics. We started talking about the effect cybernectics and genetic engineering will have to the future of the olympics and all sports for that example. Eventually, when cybernectics are more common and people starting embedding electronics in themselves, what will we do? Will we restrict games to only people who haven't had their genes tampered with and those who are chip-free. Or will we just get tired of watching normal sports because Unreal Tournament has become a live person event?
...olympic games, which was pretty much anything goes and to the winner go the spoils.....
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I think it would be a great benefit for society, because then the legalized genetic enhancements would become a highly lucrative legimate business that does controlled experiments only on willing participants. What better way of advancing biotech, growth hormone therepies, genetic engineering techniques than funding it with huge sports franchises and only using them on people who want to be using them.
Maybe I'm just dreaming here, but if this drug turns out not to encourage the growth of cancer cells (currently the main concern and only known side effect), I think it could seriously improve the quality of life of the average person. People don't exercise because it's hard. It's hard because people don't exercise. Quite an unhealthy cycle. However, this treatment, while immensely promising for muscle degenerative diseases, could really help overweight people break their unhealthy cycle.
I'll go out and say it: I'm overweight. And yes, it is my fault. I could get out and exercise a ton, I could eat less, etc, but I find the struggle unrewarding and difficult. In the month of July, I spent most of the month creating a 3D game with another guy my age. He had an average build. As an experiment on top of our research, we decided to try something. He didn't believe me that my being overweight was not a result of my eating more and exercising less than he did. So we equalized our days. We ate all meals together and ate items of equal nutritional value. We also followed identical exercise routines (I can run a few miles no problem, I just don't seem to lose weight unless I run them every day while starving myself). By the end of 3 and a half weeks, I had GAINED 10 pounds and he stayed the same. He was shocked. I was not amused. The routine we settled on was probably was less active than what I do normally to maintain.
I don't want to say I have a slow metabolism or any of those other shitty fat people excuses but I can't help but feel like I was dealt a poor hand by genetics. Muscle is expensive for the body to maintain. If I could have more muscle and have it break down less quickly, it could just help my body eat away at my apparently conserved energy being stored as fat. At the same time, it would make exercising easier by increasing my strength by a third or so. I know I'm interested.