Aggregated News
This month - 8/8/08, to be precise - the curtain rose on what many experts believe could prove to be the first genetically modified Olympics.
For the unscrupulous or overdriven Olympic athlete, the banned practice of "doping" by taking hormones or other drugs to enhance athletic prowess may seem so last century. The next thing in doping is more profound and more dangerous. It's called gene doping: permanently inserting strength- or endurance-boosting genes into DNA.
"Once you put that gene in, it's there for the rest of that person's life," says Larry Bowers, a clinical chemist at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in Colorado Springs, Colo. "You can't go back and fish it out."
Scientists developed the technology behind gene doping as a promising way to treat genetic diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and the "bubble boy" immune deficiency syndrome. This experimental medical technology - called gene therapy - has begun to emerge from the pall of early failures and fatalities in clinical trials. As gene therapy begins to enjoy some preliminary successes, scientists at the World Anti-Doping Agency, which oversees...
For the unscrupulous or overdriven Olympic athlete, the banned practice of "doping" by taking hormones or other drugs to enhance athletic prowess may seem so last century. The next thing in doping is more profound and more dangerous. It's called gene doping: permanently inserting strength- or endurance-boosting genes into DNA.
"Once you put that gene in, it's there for the rest of that person's life," says Larry Bowers, a clinical chemist at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in Colorado Springs, Colo. "You can't go back and fish it out."
Scientists developed the technology behind gene doping as a promising way to treat genetic diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and the "bubble boy" immune deficiency syndrome. This experimental medical technology - called gene therapy - has begun to emerge from the pall of early failures and fatalities in clinical trials. As gene therapy begins to enjoy some preliminary successes, scientists at the World Anti-Doping Agency, which oversees...