21st Century Olympic Doping

^{Photo by Serena Repice Lentini on Unsplash}

The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, finally set to kick off this week, have already been upended. After waiting an additional year to qualify, Games athletes will now compete in largely empty venues in an event sparked not by the running of a torch, but a series of closed-door ceremonies. Meanwhile, athletes hope to avoid joining a growing number of competitors who have tested positive for COVID-19 since arriving in Tokyo. Victors will accept gold medals passed to them on trays. Even the specter of cheating has evolved. As technologies like CRISPR leap ahead, a newer threat looms, unsteadily: gene doping.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) recently barred U.S. track star Shelby Houlihan from the Olympic trials after she tested positive for steroids—which Houlihan blamed on a pig organ meat burrito. The agency also banned sprinter and gold medal favorite Sha’Carri Richardson after she tested positive for THC. In addition to those traditional banned substances, WADA has long banned genetically modified cells and alterations of genome sequences or gene expression “by any...