Gene doping is next frontier of performance enhancers in sports

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It’s not a huge leap to see the potential gold mine here for athletes.

“Whether it is promoting an endurance-enhancing gene or increasing muscle mass,” says Andy Miah, a Scottish doctor and expert in bioethics. “There are many applications, but no direct ways to test for it.”

To get an idea, consider the case of Eero Mantyranta, a three-time Olympic gold medalist for Finland in cross-country skiing in the 1960s.

He was accused of blood doping — even back then — but was proven to have a natural genetic mutation that gave him more red blood cells than the average person. More cells to carry oxygen from the lungs means more aerobic stamina.

Mantyranta’s case illustrates the difficulty of catching dopers, because some of these mutations can happen naturally. They can also happen through genetic alteration, giving athletes superhuman physical ability.

“You take a normal human,” says Theodore Friedmann, a board member for the World Anti-Doping Agency health medicine research committee, “and you make him better than normal.”

If confined to natural training, elite athletes are said to be now using 99 percent of their natural physical capacity, compared to just 75 percent in 1896, the year of the first modern Olympics. Given those parameters, academics say there would be no new world records after the year 2060.

But that’s in a world with no genetic engineering. Scientists think a series of gene-doping breakthroughs could boost endurance by up to 10 percent and, according to one study, allow a runner to complete a marathon in 90 minutes — more than a half-hour faster than the current world record.

Consider that your favorite basketball and football players could enhance their genes to become faster, stronger, even taller, avoid the natural slowing down that comes with age — and do it with virtually no risk of being caught by a drug test.

LeBron James could be dunking into his 50s, Josh Beckett dropping nasty curveballs 20 years from now, and Brett Favre making broadcasters coo in the year 2025.

Scott Rodeo is an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. His work centers on using gene therapy to treat the recovery of rotator cuff tears. His team has completed work on sheep, but if it goes where they hope, this is literally life-changing stuff for baseball pitchers everywhere.

“The healing between tendon and bone is a slow process,” Rodeo says. “What we’re doing, this could potentially hasten recovery time. You could certainly diminish the failure rates, which are distinct.”

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There is an unavoidable ethics question here. It’s the kind of thing that physicians and philosophers could spend days debating, with no consensus.

What if doctors say your child will grow to be 4 feet tall, but a genetic alteration could make your kid 5-2? Wouldn’t you take it? So how long before someone wants their 6-2 son to be 6-8 and play college ball?

Molecular genetic engineering holds the most promise in curing muscular dystrophy in children. So how long before those same effects are used by an athlete to accomplish what otherwise wouldn’t be possible?

We utilize all kinds of enhancement already, from pills that make us feel better to plastic surgery that makes us look better. Genetic alteration may provide the same benefits, only without the drugs or risk of surgery.

“If you’re a philosopher,” Friedmann says, “you might ask, ‘If we accept it through pills, why don’t we accept it through genes?’ And the answer isn’t absolutely clear to me.”

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To reach Sam Mellinger, sports reporter for The Star, call 816-234-4365 or send e-mail to smellinger@kcstar.com | Sam Mellinger, smellinger@kcstar.com