Gene Doping in Sports: The Science and Ethics of Genetically Modified Athletes

Abstract

Publisher Summary The chapter examines the scientific basis for this potential problem highlighting the scientific, ethical, and public policy considerations that the sports community, and society-at-large should understand and sort out. The societies have largely come to accept the idea that this kind of manipulation of sports and sports performance is undesirable, and requires control, regulation, and even banning. The considerations of devising bans on drug use in sports have been based on considerations, such as doping in sports is cheating and unfair, doping harms the athletes, doping harms even non-doping athletes, doping harms society, bans musts be enforceable, and therefore require complex infrastructures for fair and just implementation, doping represents a perversion of sports, and doping is unnatural and dehumanizing. The international sports community has recognized, for many years, the dangers of all forms of doping, but it has been only in the recent past that serious and increasingly effective regulatory mechanisms have been put into place for the detection and control of drug-based doping in sports. The chapter also presents the background for potential gene-based doping and explains the ways in that this threat has emerged from the new area of medicine called “gene therapy.” It will examine whether the tools of medically justifiable genetic modification of human subjects are appropriate for modification of human non-disease traits for what are called “genetic enhancement,” and to indicate conclusion that a sport represents an area in that this development in human biology is likely to be first tested. The chapter concludes that, for scientific, social, and ethical reasons, the use of gene transfer methods to enhance sports performance is to be condemned.