Stickler*
Active member
Just another decent but older news paper article from the washington post. the dates are prevelant based on the content, but I was wondering if manipulation of the myostatin gene or drugs to control it etc is still a matter of debate or if the science is closer to perfection w/o causing ultimate death in it's subjects...
nothing like being huge then dying after a nice photo op and sponsor endorsements.. (ok not that funny)
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Beyond Steroids: Designer Genes
For Unscrupulous Athletes, Better Bodies Are a Tweaked Chromosome Away
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 17, 2005; Page C01
Today, as a series of muscular baseball superstars troop to Capitol Hill for what is sure to be a well-publicized congressional hearing, the word on everyone's lips (and possibly in a few hips) is: steroids.
But in a few years, some scientists suggest, the phrase whispered among would-be home-run hitters and Olympic contenders could well be: gene doping.
Steroids, after all, are very 20th century, very East German Olympic team, circa 1976. Today's hearing is, in effect, about yesterday's ballgame.
By manipulating the human genetic code, by adding and subtracting genes to replace defective or missing ones, researchers may someday unlock cures for a variety of diseases, from Parkinson's to muscular dystrophy to certain cancers. At the same time, however, researchers are starting to see a more mundane, but culturally significant, sideline to gene therapy: the potential to create nearly superhuman athletes. The same techniques that could repair diseased muscles may enable athletes to heft more weight, run faster or jump higher than ever thought possible.
Gene doping hasn't moved out of the research clinic yet, as far as is known. But the possibility that it will -- and soon -- has moved the World Anti-Doping Agency, which governs Olympic drug testing, to establish a panel to monitor its development. "The feeling is that in sports, where there's so much financial pressure and other pressures to skirt the rules, some people will feel compelled to do a genetic version of BALCO," the California lab at the heart of baseball's steroid scandal, says Theodore Friedmann, a gene-therapy expert who is a member of the Anti-Doping Agency's panel.
The agency's concern is that gene manipulation will evolve not just into a new form of cheating, but into a new form of undetectable cheating. Unlike steroids, which can be identified through blood and urine tests, the technology for determining alterations in the human genetic code is still crude and uncertain.
It may be possible to glimpse the coming debate in a laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. There, through gene transplantation, physiologist H. Lee Sweeney has created "Schwarzenegger mice," rodents with unnaturally developed physiques. After Sweeney and his associates injected the mice with a gene known to stimulate a protein that promotes muscle growth, the mice grew muscles that were 15 to 30 percent bigger than normal, even though the rodents were sedentary.
Next, Sweeney and exercise physiologist Roger Farrar injected the same muscle-building gene into one leg of a group of lab rats and subjected them to an eight-week weight-training regimen (imagine rats scurrying up ladders with weights strapped to their backs). Result: The injected leg became twice as strong as the uninjected leg. After the training stopped, the injected muscles lost strength at a much slower rate than those on the unenhanced leg.
It's easy to see where this is going. Athletes not only would look and perform like Six Million Dollar Men, they could also be easily be rebuilt through gene therapy when their muscles are injured.
Sweeney says last summer's Olympic Games may be the last without genetically enhanced athletes.
In another decade, he says, "this will become a major issue. There will be people -- if not in this country, then in other countries -- who will have the technology in hand and are entrepreneurial enough to offer it to people who have legitimate [health] reasons to try and change their muscle performance. There will be some athletes with money who will try it. That's how it's going to begin."
Gene therapy is strictly regulated in the United States, as well as countries including Great Britain, Germany, Japan, China and Australia, where clinical trials are taking place. The World Anti-Doping Agency also has gene treatments on its prohibited list.
But as the steroid debate has shown, such measures are unlikely to stop a rogue clinic from supplying willing athletes with experimental treatments for the right price.
Sweeney cautions that gene therapy still carries many unknowns and risks. For example, in 1997 and 1998, scientists transferred genes designed to increase oxygen-carrying red blood cells into monkeys and baboons. The animals' red blood cell counts did indeed double in 10 weeks -- a potential boon for marathoners and other endurance athletes. But the monkeys' blood became so thick that it had to be regularly diluted to prevent heart failure.
Sweeney suggests a go-slow approach for athletes, even when gene therapies show promise for treating muscle-wasting diseases. "If you're 85 years old and losing the ability to walk, you probably don't mind taking a chance on something that might be a cure," he says. "But if you're a 25-year-old athlete, you just don't know what the long-term side effects are."
This, too, mirrors the debate about steroids. They have been beneficial in treating people who are ill with a wide variety of diseases, including lymphoma, but their unsupervised use can have dangerous side effects in healthy athletes. Problem is, athletes -- and fans -- are often of two minds about what's tolerable: we tsk-tsk the cheating and grotesque physiques, but we love new world records and home runs that never seem to land.
Gene doping potentially pushes this cultural hypocrisy even further. "If we're going to blur the distinction between what's training and effort, and what's biotechnology, is society going to go along with that?" asks Friedmann, who is director of the gene therapy program at the University of California at San Diego. "If sport is going to masquerade as biotech, that should raise a question in the minds of the public: What are we watching?"
He adds, "Sports to me is about doing as much with your body as you can. Maybe I'm obeying some old romantic rules that are probably gone. But I'd like to admire an achievement without wondering whose achievement it really is."
nothing like being huge then dying after a nice photo op and sponsor endorsements.. (ok not that funny)
---
Beyond Steroids: Designer Genes
For Unscrupulous Athletes, Better Bodies Are a Tweaked Chromosome Away
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 17, 2005; Page C01
Today, as a series of muscular baseball superstars troop to Capitol Hill for what is sure to be a well-publicized congressional hearing, the word on everyone's lips (and possibly in a few hips) is: steroids.
But in a few years, some scientists suggest, the phrase whispered among would-be home-run hitters and Olympic contenders could well be: gene doping.
Steroids, after all, are very 20th century, very East German Olympic team, circa 1976. Today's hearing is, in effect, about yesterday's ballgame.
By manipulating the human genetic code, by adding and subtracting genes to replace defective or missing ones, researchers may someday unlock cures for a variety of diseases, from Parkinson's to muscular dystrophy to certain cancers. At the same time, however, researchers are starting to see a more mundane, but culturally significant, sideline to gene therapy: the potential to create nearly superhuman athletes. The same techniques that could repair diseased muscles may enable athletes to heft more weight, run faster or jump higher than ever thought possible.
Gene doping hasn't moved out of the research clinic yet, as far as is known. But the possibility that it will -- and soon -- has moved the World Anti-Doping Agency, which governs Olympic drug testing, to establish a panel to monitor its development. "The feeling is that in sports, where there's so much financial pressure and other pressures to skirt the rules, some people will feel compelled to do a genetic version of BALCO," the California lab at the heart of baseball's steroid scandal, says Theodore Friedmann, a gene-therapy expert who is a member of the Anti-Doping Agency's panel.
The agency's concern is that gene manipulation will evolve not just into a new form of cheating, but into a new form of undetectable cheating. Unlike steroids, which can be identified through blood and urine tests, the technology for determining alterations in the human genetic code is still crude and uncertain.
It may be possible to glimpse the coming debate in a laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. There, through gene transplantation, physiologist H. Lee Sweeney has created "Schwarzenegger mice," rodents with unnaturally developed physiques. After Sweeney and his associates injected the mice with a gene known to stimulate a protein that promotes muscle growth, the mice grew muscles that were 15 to 30 percent bigger than normal, even though the rodents were sedentary.
Next, Sweeney and exercise physiologist Roger Farrar injected the same muscle-building gene into one leg of a group of lab rats and subjected them to an eight-week weight-training regimen (imagine rats scurrying up ladders with weights strapped to their backs). Result: The injected leg became twice as strong as the uninjected leg. After the training stopped, the injected muscles lost strength at a much slower rate than those on the unenhanced leg.
It's easy to see where this is going. Athletes not only would look and perform like Six Million Dollar Men, they could also be easily be rebuilt through gene therapy when their muscles are injured.
Sweeney says last summer's Olympic Games may be the last without genetically enhanced athletes.
In another decade, he says, "this will become a major issue. There will be people -- if not in this country, then in other countries -- who will have the technology in hand and are entrepreneurial enough to offer it to people who have legitimate [health] reasons to try and change their muscle performance. There will be some athletes with money who will try it. That's how it's going to begin."
Gene therapy is strictly regulated in the United States, as well as countries including Great Britain, Germany, Japan, China and Australia, where clinical trials are taking place. The World Anti-Doping Agency also has gene treatments on its prohibited list.
But as the steroid debate has shown, such measures are unlikely to stop a rogue clinic from supplying willing athletes with experimental treatments for the right price.
Sweeney cautions that gene therapy still carries many unknowns and risks. For example, in 1997 and 1998, scientists transferred genes designed to increase oxygen-carrying red blood cells into monkeys and baboons. The animals' red blood cell counts did indeed double in 10 weeks -- a potential boon for marathoners and other endurance athletes. But the monkeys' blood became so thick that it had to be regularly diluted to prevent heart failure.
Sweeney suggests a go-slow approach for athletes, even when gene therapies show promise for treating muscle-wasting diseases. "If you're 85 years old and losing the ability to walk, you probably don't mind taking a chance on something that might be a cure," he says. "But if you're a 25-year-old athlete, you just don't know what the long-term side effects are."
This, too, mirrors the debate about steroids. They have been beneficial in treating people who are ill with a wide variety of diseases, including lymphoma, but their unsupervised use can have dangerous side effects in healthy athletes. Problem is, athletes -- and fans -- are often of two minds about what's tolerable: we tsk-tsk the cheating and grotesque physiques, but we love new world records and home runs that never seem to land.
Gene doping potentially pushes this cultural hypocrisy even further. "If we're going to blur the distinction between what's training and effort, and what's biotechnology, is society going to go along with that?" asks Friedmann, who is director of the gene therapy program at the University of California at San Diego. "If sport is going to masquerade as biotech, that should raise a question in the minds of the public: What are we watching?"
He adds, "Sports to me is about doing as much with your body as you can. Maybe I'm obeying some old romantic rules that are probably gone. But I'd like to admire an achievement without wondering whose achievement it really is."
