Why Do Athletes Use Gene Therapy?

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The debate over athletes’ use of performance-enhancing substances is getting more complicated as new techniques in gene therapy become a reality. The availability of these new methods of boosting performance will force authorities to decide what is valued in sports – displays of physical excellence developed through hard work or victory at any cost. For centuries, spectators and athletes have cherished the tradition of fairness in sports. While sports competition is, of course, about winning, it is also about how a player or team wins. Athletes who use any type of biotechnology give themselves an unfair advantage and disrupt the sense of fair play, thus they should be banned from competition. Researchers are experimenting with techniques that could manipulate an athlete’s genetic code to build stronger muscles or increase endurance. Gregory Lamb, in an …show more content…
The International Olympic Committee’s World Anti-Doping Agency has become so alarmed about the possible effects of new gene technology on athletic competition that it has banned the use of gene therapies and urged researchers to devise a test for detecting genetic modification (Lamb 13). Peter McCrory, a writer for the British Journal of Sports Medicine, writes that gene transfer therapy “has the potential to improve sporting performance beyond traditional drugs and in ways that make detection extremely difficult, if not impossible at the present time. It sounds like the ultimate sporting nightmare come true.” If athletes are allowed to alter their bodies, they can bypass the hard work of training. Instead of witnessing sports as a spectacle of human effort, fans will be left marveling at scientific advances, which have little relation to the athletic tradition of fair

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remarkable potential is used in sport practice. However, the increasing availability of molecular research and associated possibilities create a situation where the moral questions need to be comprehensively addressed. Key words: SPORT, GENETICS, ETHICS, GENE DOPING. 1 Corresponding author. Institute of Physical Culture, ul. Piastow 40b, blok 6, 70-067 Szczecin, Poland. Phone: +48914442735, Fax: +48914442736 E-mail: cieszczyk@poczta.onet.pl Submitted for publication April 2010. Accepted for publication…

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