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S cientists have seen the future of sport. It involves mice that can lift three times the average, humans who can run 90-minute marathons, and ligament tears that can be fixed by injection.
It is genetic engineering, therapy and doping, and it is the arrival of the bionic athlete. At the extreme, this is either the advancement or end of the human race. At the minimum, it is the unavoidable change to the way our sports — baseball, football, the Olympics, you name it — are played.
They used to talk about this in whispered tones, with only the occasional mention in mainstream media. Five years ago, the experts said gene doping wouldn’t be a concern for another five years. More and more, that sci-fi, futuristic threat is now.
“The upcoming Olympics,” says Ron Evans, a genetics professor at the Salk Institute, “it’s probable that right now, someone is training on this.”
Evans knows. He led a team of geneticists who created “the marathon mouse,” a rodent that ran twice as long as normal mice with one-third of the weight gain.
The goal of Evans’ work is to cure obesity, diabetes, certain kinds of heart disease, and all sorts of noble endeavors. But you know who calls him? Athletes. Coaches. Even a horse trainer.
A couple of snapshots:
A German track coach charged with supplying steroids to underage athletes is proven in court to have the knowledge and desire to purchase Repoxygen, a substance that activates a gene that stimulates the body’s production of red blood cells. One cell biologist refers to this as the “crossing of the Rubicon” into the world of gene doping.
China holds science fairs in which it shows off rabbits with human ears, and a mutant fish that matures into adulthood in half the time, setting off alarms around the globe about what else that country may be up to.
This is not the apocalypse of life as we know it. Genetic engineering’s base is in saving lives, which it has done already. Children suffering severe anemia have already benefited from still-risky experimental treatments that injected genes to boost red blood-cell production.
But this could be the apocalypse of sports as we know it. The abuse of this technology may forever change our games. This is real, experts say. It’s happening soon, if not already.
The competition may be drifting to labs in a way that could make BALCO look quaint. Gene doping has the potential to have much more impact on sports than steroids or HGH ever did.
“Absolutely,” says Gary Green, a UCLA physician who advises Major League Baseball on its drug policy. “It could really redefine everything we think about sports. You could end up with 10 different competitions, the genetically natural and the genetically unnatural. It’s a really dangerous thing.”
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Your local grocery store sells the benefits of gene therapy. Those greenhouse tomatoes, the ones that are smooth and plump and beautifully red even out of season? Yeah, they’ve been genetically altered.
The world of genetic engineering creates possibilities for all sorts of medical miracles. There are between 250,000 and 300,000 ACL injuries per year in America — the vast majority away from professional sports — and they may soon be treated with an injection that would heal the ligament. No more surgery.
Researchers at Baylor used genetic modification to boost the size of pigs by 20 percent while cutting down on fat and avoiding the debilitating side effects produced by more traditional treatments.
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