Big sport: from genetic selection to gene doping
"Gold" for mutants: athletes will be trained using genetic technologies
Kirill Zhurenkov, Vesti Weekly
Sensational data was announced by the head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency Vladimir Uiba: he said that in Russian sports "genetic technologies have been adopted", the task is to select athletes with the help of science, not intuition.
It turns out that experts have learned to determine by genes what talents are inherent in a person, whether he is a good runner or, say, a swimmer – successes in deciphering the human genome affect. Many refer to the Chinese experience: there, athletes who have been selected in a special way for more than 10 years have performed well at the Olympic Games in Beijing.
Meanwhile, the alarm is being sounded in world sports: we are on the threshold of a new era when not only athletes, but also genetic scientists will compete.
And it's not about special tests, thanks to which you can find a born strongman or sprinter – they themselves do not cause any particular complaints. The stumbling block is different: experts fear the emergence of gene doping, and with it, genetically modified champions.
A recent scandal: at the London Olympics, a 16-year–old Chinese woman, Ye Shiwen, set a world record in the 400-meter complex swimming, and her result was better than that of the male champion at the same distance. The doping test turned out to be clean, and the athlete herself denies all charges of using prohibited drugs. However, experts are wondering: how is this possible? The director of the World Association of Swimming Coaches, John Leonard, knows the answer: he hinted that very soon specialists will learn how to detect genetic manipulations – they say, then it will be possible to return to talking about a new record, because doping samples have been stored for 8 years. And journalists are not shy about epithets at all: maybe mutant athletes get Olympic medals?
Scientists have proved that this is quite possible. Gene doping is usually referred to as the transfer of cells or genetic material into the human body or the modification of its own genes. So, similar technologies are already beginning to be used in medicine, for example, for the treatment of heart diseases (in the near future 250 patients will receive healthy genes as part of an ambitious project of the British Heart Disease Foundation). But if it is important for doctors to save a person, then the main task in sports is to bring him to a unique physical form. The first experiments were conducted on mice: back in the mid-2000s, the pets of scientists from the Salk Institute for Biological Research in La Jolla (California) could run an hour longer and almost a kilometer further than ordinary individuals. They moved from animals to humans: there was a fuss about two drugs with unpronounceable names – GW1516 and AICAR, which allegedly affect the genes of muscle cells and dramatically increase endurance.
The key advantage of gene doping is that it cannot be detected. However, anti-doping fighters are also not asleep: biological passports, in which the physiological data of athletes are recorded, should become an insurmountable barrier to the latest genetic developments. With their help, it is easy to understand whether a person uses doping or not: for example, due to abnormal indicators, for the first time in history, the Olympic champion at a distance of 1,500 meters, the Turkish runner Asly Chakyr-Alptekin, was disqualified…
Recently, a group of reputable experts made a report in which, on the one hand, they called for the expansion of research in this direction, and on the other – for an equally broad discussion of emerging problems. Ogonyok magazine contacted one of the authors of the report, Professor Andy MIA of the University of Western Scotland, who recently spoke in St. Petersburg at the largest international sports congress SportAccord 2013.
– Could you clarify the main intrigue in world sports: is gene doping already being used?
– Gene doping can already be used, although no one knows for sure whether it is true or not. However, athletes who use this doping are likely to risk seriously undermining their health. That is why WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) is concerned to prevent possible abuses.
– Are the first gene tests for sports talents really being conducted?
– There are paid genetic tests to help determine which sports you are prone to – strength or endurance. The reliability of such tests is still questionable, but they are being done and will definitely be done further.
But genetic modification is completely different: the participation of genetically modified athletes, for example, in the Sochi Olympics is technically quite possible. Another question is that we can find out the truth only in a couple of years: today there are simply no tests that allow us to establish this.
– So we know all the genes responsible for how a person runs, jumps or, say, fights?
– A genetic map related to sports talents is published every year, but the main difficulty is in the sample size. Hundreds of thousands of samples are needed, and modern research is still far from that.
– Who is the leader in sports genetics today?
– There are several countries where a lot is being done in this direction, among them the UK, USA, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada… But it is very difficult to say unequivocally who is in the lead, because everything happens behind closed doors.
I think genetic modification will become an integral part of elite sports when athletes reach the ceiling of their capabilities. If we expect new records from them, we must give them technology in their hands. And genetics offers a safer path than any synthetic substances or related methods.
– How risky is it?
– There is a danger that society will decide that a person is determined by genes. But it's not like that! At best, they affect our personality and physiology by 50 percent. The environment plays a key role. In addition, there are perhaps more important elements in human biology, for example, its proteome (a set of proteins and their modifications in the body. The Human Proteome project is considered to be no less complex and large–scale than another well-known project - the Human Genome. In general, the appearance of athletes whose genes are modified does not contradict human nature, just as the existence of people with physical disabilities does not contradict it. It is not necessary to consider it something bad, it is rather a way to help people do what they like...
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru08.07.2013