Thursday, August 07, 2008

Gene Doping: Wrong for Beijing Olympic Athletes but Right for Your Grandchildren?

By Andrea Useem

Here’s a peek at the Summer Olympics of the future: a swimmer racing with genetically lengthened arms, artificially widened nostrils (for more efficient breathing), and surgically enlarged webbing between his fingers. Sounds scary, right? Not to Andy Miah, who teaches bioethics at the University of the West of Scotland and outlined this exact scenario in a Washington Post op-ed this past Sunday, calling it “only natural.”

Enhancing ourselves is only human, Miah argues. After all, the early Greeks ate mushrooms to improve their sports prowess. “We need to abolish our current anti-doping rules and embrace a performance policy that recognizes the merit of using human enhancements,” writes Miah. He thinks this should include the newest form of enhancement, gene doping, which uses cells or genes to improve athletic performance. (Check out this info-graphic from Science News to see how it sometimes works.) Read More

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