Read the article and then answer the questions.
Who, if anybody, should be allowed to use this gene?
Should the government control(FDA) its distribution just like a medicine?
Why or why not.
If you were an athlete, what other types of genes might you want to have
available?
If we allowed everybody to have access to the genes of the future, how would
this affect sporting competitions?
How do they make synthetic genes?
11 January 2014
Gene doping: Sport's biggest battle?
By Tim Franks BBC News
This could be a battle like no other in sport. The authorities are so
concerned, they have been preparing for it for more than 10 years. But it is
still unclear whether they have the tools to test for it - or whether anyone
has done it successfully. It is gene doping.
The idea is simple: to alter our genetic makeup, the very building blocks of who
we are, in order to make us stronger or faster. The practicalities are highly
complex.
Gene therapists - for example those treating very sick children at London's Great
Ormond Street hospital - add a synthetic gene to the patient's genome, and
reintroduce it into the bone marrow via a disabled virus. The new gene is
expressed by the patient's cells and acts like a medicine, permanently
incorporated in the bone marrow.
It is still a highly specialised, rare treatment, but the principle is being used for
research into an ever wide range of diseases, including those where the muscles
deteriorate. At which point, it becomes easier to imagine how athletes might
benefit.
Behind his glasses, Dr Philippe Moullier's eyes crinkle with energy and wry
humour. He has the air of someone keen to be surprised by the work he is
leading out of his tiny office at the French National Institute of Health and Medical
Research (Inserm) in Nantes. Even he, though, was taken aback some years
ago by the response to an academic paper he had published, as part of his work
on gene therapy treatments for neuromuscular diseases.
Scientists have used gene therapy to treat mice with muscular dystrophy
Moullier had shown it was possible to produce artificially one particular gene - the
erythropoietin gene - and introduce it into the body. And as anyone who had a
vague brush with professional cycling in the 90s knows, the hormone
erythropoietin, or EPO - which controls the production of red blood cells - was the
illicit dope of choice for competitors. It was the wonder drug Lance Armstrong
kept in his fridge, to boost his oxygen-carrying red-blood-cell count.
The competition is so high, those guys are ready to do anything to make the
difference”
But while injected EPO has been detectable for years, introducing the EPO gene
would result in the body producing its own EPO. Could this be an undetectable
way of improving oxygen delivery?
Shortly after Philippe Moullier published his paper, a bunch of visitors turned up
to his laboratory in Nantes. They explained that they had been professional
cyclists, had competed in the Tour de France, and were now part of an
association fighting doping. At first Moullier says he was keen to share the
science. He ended up feeling rather alarmed.
"They were very excited. They told me that even though the technology was still
at the research level, if it was accessible to the cyclists it would likely be used. I
was completely shocked and surprised." Moullier says he warned that there was
no way in which the therapy could, at that stage, be used safely. He was met with
a collective shrug. His visitors, he suspected, were hiding their real motives.
"They didn't seem to care, it didn't seem to be a problem for them. The
competition is so high, those guys are ready to do anything to make the
difference."
And while making a permanent change to the genome may be complex - using a
disabled virus to carry the genetic medicine to the cells - Philippe Moullier says
there is now a shortcut, which delivers temporary results: injecting the purified
gene directly into your muscle.
In the years since he was visited by the ex-cyclists it has become possible for
anyone to get hold of the EPO gene on the internet.
The gene can be grown in your kitchen
Even better for the would-be doper, says Moullier, this type of temporary boost
may, after a few days, be hard for the authorities to detect.
So what is the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) doing about it?
It's unethical to withhold from someone something that would actually allow
their muscles to be much healthier”
Back in 2003, Wada banned gene doping.
The agency argues that the practice would not just be unfair, it could be lethal introducing an extra copy of the EPO gene into your body could lead to too many
red blood cells being produced and your blood thickening into sludge. As to
whether there are tests for gene doping, Wada's Director of Science, Olivier
Rabin, is more vague - deliberately so, he says.
"For over 10 years we've been developing this technology, and we believe we
have the tools to detect gene doping. And as to when it will be implemented, it's
something that Wada keeps at its discretion. We need to validate this because as
you know our technology can be challenged in the court."
But there is a deeper question. Even if there were to be or already is a legally
and biologically fireproof test for gene doping, what should happen if gene
therapy were to become much more widespread, even routine? What if we were
all able to buy, over the counter, genetic medicine to slow muscle deterioration?
Should we - could we - stop athletes from using the medicine, to prolong their
careers or speed a return from injury?
Professor Lee Sweeney has been one of the leading researchers into gene
therapy for two decades. Based at the University of Pennsylvania, he is one of
Wada's team of expert advisers on gene doping.
Like Philippe Moullier, he has experience of publishing research - and getting
calls from people involved in sports. Sweeney's study, in the 1990s, was into how
inserting the IGF-1 gene into the muscles of mice promoted muscle growth and
slowed the ageing process. (The IGF-1 gene produces the hormone known as
"insulin-like growth factor 1".)
"We were contacted by numerous athletes, even coaches," Sweeney recalls.
"They didn't understand that we were still at an early stage in terms of gene
therapy moving to humans." Even now, he says, the medical research is moving
very slowly in terms of using the technique for seriously ill people.
"Back then, I hadn't even considered the fact that a young, ultra-healthy
individual who's competing at the peak of their career would risk anything. But
obviously many of them would risk everything."
Brazil could be the first gene doping Olympics - if it wasn't London or Beijing
This, though, is where Sweeney diverges from the current Wada orthodoxy. If
gene therapy to prevent muscle deterioration were safe, he says, then it would
become an ethical issue.
There are some, he concedes, who believe it would be wrong to interfere, as
they see it, with the ageing process as part of the natural human condition. But if
change means, in Sweeney's words "sustaining normal quality of life for much
longer", then he counts himself in favour. And this is where the issue swings back
to sport.
"From my own work with the mice, I also know that earlier you intervene, the
better off you're going to be when you get old. So once you go down that path, I
think it's unethical to withhold from someone something that would actually allow
their muscles to be much healthier now and to the future. As long as there's no
safety risk, I don't see why athletes should be punished because they're athletes.
So I'm on the other side of the fence from Wada on this one, even though we're
on the same team right now."
Olivier Rabin at Wada argues, in response, that such ground will only need to be
trod decades from now, given how slowly gene therapy appears in practice to be
progressing. And when the time comes, he says, the agency will have to draw
the line it does with all drugs: do they unfairly enhance performance?
It seems, though, that the nature of gene doping will make drawing that line
technically difficult and ethically awkward. The authorities, the athletes, the fans
may need to agree a whole new definition of what we want sport to mean.