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octothorp · 08-17-2004, 11:58 AM

There was an interesting piece on the CBC news last night about the ethics regarding athletes using gene-therapy to enhance performance. The piece was fairly one-sided, just an interview with a pro-genetics pundit (Andy Miah, who has written a book about the subject), but it raised some interesting points.

Here's an article about those issues:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sports/olympics/...condsubsection=

Firstly, one of the big problems with gene therapy is that it is currently undetectable, and it might never be possible to differetiate between genetically modified athletes and those in whom the gene occurs naturally.

The other issue is that genetic therapy will likely be responsible for increasing the health of individuals and populations, and cure diseases. It's not like steroids where an athetes will do far more harm to their systems over the long-term. (Of course, given the newness of the technologies, there could be untold deadly side-effects).

But if we can use gene therapy to enable athletes to run the 100 in under 8 seconds, is there still really a point to competition? Does it render running, lifting, and throwing events pretty much pointless? Is there really any argument anymore for keeping sports 'pure'?

08-17-2004, 11:58 AM	#1
octothorp Franchise Player Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: not lurking Exp:	There was an interesting piece on the CBC news last night about the ethics regarding athletes using gene-therapy to enhance performance. The piece was fairly one-sided, just an interview with a pro-genetics pundit (Andy Miah, who has written a book about the subject), but it raised some interesting points. Here's an article about those issues: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sports/olympics/...condsubsection= Firstly, one of the big problems with gene therapy is that it is currently undetectable, and it might never be possible to differetiate between genetically modified athletes and those in whom the gene occurs naturally. The other issue is that genetic therapy will likely be responsible for increasing the health of individuals and populations, and cure diseases. It's not like steroids where an athetes will do far more harm to their systems over the long-term. (Of course, given the newness of the technologies, there could be untold deadly side-effects). But if we can use gene therapy to enable athletes to run the 100 in under 8 seconds, is there still really a point to competition? Does it render running, lifting, and throwing events pretty much pointless? Is there really any argument anymore for keeping sports 'pure'?