Will gene-altered athletes kill sport?

It would make today's "cat and mouse" detection of drug-taking athletes seem trivial. It would produce excellence without effort, challenging the spirit of the Olympics and the meaning of all sports competition. More broadly, it could become a kind of referendum on how the world views the improvement of humans through technology.

The catalyst is an emerging science called gene modification or gene enhancement. Using it, an athlete could be injected with the DNA of an animal, for example, and quickly become much faster and stronger. "You don't need to lift weights, and you don't need to go on 10-mile runs to train for endurance," explains Peter Weyand, who teach kinesiology - the study of muscles and human movement - at Rice University in Houston. "It would replace training; it would make training seem trivial and more than obsolete. Somebody who's not athletic at all could be transformed into something superhuman."

Today's world-class athletes are already genetic oddities, possessing superior native abilities that they hone through training - and in some cases, through illegal drugs. But with genetic engineering, anyone...