INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

therapies could be used to artificially induce the adaptations
associated with intense, structured training regimes in people who are
sedentary, physically unable to exercise, or suffering from disabling
genetic diseases. Though it would be clearly beneficial to mimic the
healthy benefits of exercise in those who cannot exercise, the benefits
of using gene transfer technology to increase athletes’ strength,
endurance, oxygen kinetics, energy generation, and so on, for the sole
purpose of enhancing their athletic performances, is much more
uncertain. Before addressing the ethical issues associated with doing
so, I will first summarise several ways in which gene transfer
procedures might enhance athletic performance.
There are several sites in the body where gene transfer procedures
could produce performance-enhancing effects, according to University
of Pennsylvania physiologist Dr H. Lee Sweeney. Transferring and
expressing particular genes in the body can make specific muscles
stronger, help the body utilise glucose at more desirable rates, and
enhance the efficiency of the nervous and cardiovascular systems.
However, until recently, the performance-enhancing aspects of gene
therapies had been generally ignored in favour of continuing research
on the restorative and therapeutic applications of the technology,
which might improve the health of individuals with genetic disorders.
Dr Joseph Glorioso of the University of Pittsburgh medical school
notes that slightly modifying the gene therapy he designed to treat his
patients’ arthritic joints will likely produce performance-enhancing
effects in healthy athletes. Using a modified version of Dr Glorioso’s
arthritis gene transfer treatment, athletes could reduce the pain and
inflammation that results from strenuous training sessions, which
could allow them to train longer, and more intensively, without
succumbing to joint pain from overuse. Such a novel application of
gene transfer technology is gathering a great deal of attention in the
sports medicine field and represents yet another way that manipulating
an athlete’s genetic code and expression of genes can translate into
performance-enhancing effects.
Growth factors can greatly improve athletic performance as well,
which is why the WADA and the IOC Medical Commission ban the
use of them in elite sport and specifically at the Olympic Games.
Doping control tests can detect the use of the majority of growth
hormones, which greatly discourages most athletes from using them to
- 295 -