The Olympic rings meet the double helix

Michael Rogers Columnist • Profile • E-mail

In 1982 Isaac Asimov wrote a classic short story about genetically-engineered athletes with giant lungs, capable of running fifty miles an hour.  Asimov’s “Super Runners” are still entirely science fiction, but the intrusion of genetic technology into sports is not.  In fact, Turin may be one of the last Olympics in history where athletes are tested only for drugs.  “Gene doping,” the next frontier of illicit technologic performance enhancement, is already coming into view — and it may someday prove nearly impossible to control. 

Gene doping is a variant on the fondest medical dream for genetic engineering: human gene therapy.  Simply put, genes control the manufacture of the proteins that underlie all of the human body’s functions. Missing or malfunctioning genes thus account for countless varieties of human ills, and the hope is that someday by replacing or repairing those miscreant genes, a wide range of illness and disability can be cured or controlled.  But just as gene therapy promises to restore normality to the infirm, it also carries the potential to give super powers to those who are already entirely fit. 

Work in therapeutic gene therapy was how “gene doping” first reared its head, seven years ago, with the work of H. Lee Sweeney at the University of Pennsylvania.  Sweeney was investigating ways that gene therapy might help people with muscular dystrophy, or elderly patients whose muscle mass has dangerously declined.  Sweeney created a synthetic gene that promotes an insulin-like substance encouraging muscle cell growth, and used a tiny virus to carry the gene into the muscles of laboratory mice.  The mice muscles grew 15 to 30 percent larger than normal — even though the mice had no exercise. And when middle-aged mice with the genetically-enhanced musculature grew to old age, they retained their megamuscles.  

As soon as Sweeney’s work was published, athletes and their coaches began to call. Of course, the safety and efficacy of Sweeney’s work isn’t even sufficiently established to use in the chronically ill, much less those interested in the technique for sport. (Sweeney has only now expanded his work to dogs.)  It wasn’t long, however, that additional gene therapy research drew more attention from athletes.  Se-Jin Lee, a Johns Hopkins researcher, accelerated muscle growth in mice by blocking the gene that produces a protein that limits muscle growth. (Children with this rare mutation naturally can be exceedingly strong for their age.)  Another researcher genetically modified the fat-burning abilities of mice muscles to significantly increase endurance.

The World Anti-Doping Agency — the Olympic Committee’s watchdog for such matters — is already funding work on detecting genetic modifications, but it’s much trickier than merely sniffing out illicit drug use. The compounds that the added genes produce are generally identical to what the body already produces, and the viruses used to insert the new genes are also widely found in humans. While there may be some promising — and very expensive — potential solutions on the horizon, at present most researchers say that the only sure way to detect genetic manipulation would be an actual needle biopsy of each athlete’s muscle tissue.  That’s likely to be a non-starter for even the most dedicated Olympian.

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