Genetic Doping

Apparently gene therapy is working well enough to warrant some athletes using it, despite being largely un-tested on humans:

Indeed, some therapies that are being developed to help people with degenerative diseases and genetic defects live longer and more high-functioning lives might also be used to boost healthy bodies. These include “treatments that regenerate muscle, increase its strength, and protect it from degeneration,” H. Lee Sweeney, a physiologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who was not involved in the new paper, wrote in a July 2004 article for Scientific American. “Among these are therapies that give patients a synthetic gene, which can last for years, producing high amounts of naturally occurring muscle-building chemicals.”

One molecular manipulation in particular, a modulator of peroxisomal proliferator-activated receptor delta, “regulates expression of genes involved in lipid metabolism, energy utilization, and insulin action,” noted the authors, and it “increases the production of slow twitch oxidative energy-efficient muscle fibers.”

It’ll be interesting to see how gene therapy plays out in something like the Olympics or MLB. I wonder if we’ll have a bunch of famous athletes coming out of the gene therapy closet in another decade or so.