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When done to treat disease and under proper supervision, injected genes come with markers that are easy to detect. Obviously, athletes using this technology won’t want such red flags, so detection would come only if the tester knew precisely where to look. And thus initiates the cat-and-mouse game that is the performance-enhancement industry.
This is why experts are already coordinating with sports leagues and organizations about how to deal with the inevitable problem of gene doping. Only thing is, there are no clear answers.
“It’s not until someone on the inside slips you a syringe and you see what’s in it,” says Salk Institute genetics expert Ron Evans. “There’s always a new drug, and if people are willing to take something new, that hasn’t been designed for health standards, it’s going to be hard to detect.”
Theodore Friedmann, a board member at the World Anti-Doping Agency, is more optimistic.
He says underground gene doping will eventually be detectable, just by different technology than is available now. The methods will need to be broader, according to Friedmann, more comprehensive.
“How difficult it will be depends on how the research goes,” he says. “I think we’re all thinking it will be possible to detect this kind of manipulation. But it will involve new techniques.”
Some of those new techniques may mean more concessions by the unions of the major professional sports. Specifically, blood testing is now prohibited in the NFL and Major League Baseball, where union leaders say it’s an invasion of privacy.
It figures that tests for gene doping would be at least that invasive and maybe more. Minds would need to be changed, and concessions made.
“Twenty years ago, they said, ‘They’ll never let ’em test,’ ” says John Lombardo, a 30-year veteran of sports medicine and advisor to the NFL on its drug policy. “There’s still a lot of people who say they’ll never take blood. Look at the Olympics now. They take blood.”
Gary Green, Lombardo’s counterpart for MLB’s drug policy, says his league and others have learned from the steroids and HGH problems that the only way to deal with these issues is with a dynamic policy that can change along with the research and advancements.
Green also said it’s imperative that leagues and sporting authorities work with law enforcement, and also that everyone understand nothing will completely stop cheating.
“It’s never going to deter everyone,” Green says. “I mean, why do we have prisons?”
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