[tt] WP: Enhanced Athletes? It's Only Natural.

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Enhanced Athletes? It's Only Natural.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080103060_pf.html
8.8.3

By Andy Miah

Here's what it could look like: A swimmer, impossibly long arms
swinging at his side, takes to the starting block. He has trained
for this moment for months. Keeping up with the latest developments,
he has endured surgical enhancements to enlarge the webbing in his
fingers and toes. He's wearing the ultimate in sharkskin swimsuit
technology. He inhales deeply through nasal passages surgically
widened to optimize his breathing efficiency -- and dives in.

That's not something we'll see at the Beijing Olympics, of course.
We'll see speed and finesse, but then, behind the scenes, the new
champions will be poked and prodded and thoroughly examined to make
sure that they got to the podium by dint of pure brute strength and
training prowess, not doping.

But maybe it's time that our view of human enhancement changed. I'll
be on my way to China this week for my fifth Olympics -- as a
passionate spectator and a scientific observer of the latest in the
fusion of sports and technology. I'm looking forward to my favorite
event, the triathlon. But I'm not looking forward to the endless,
inevitable hand-wringing over doping and performance enhancement.
It's entirely reasonable to look down on illegal drug use, duplicity
and rule-breaking, but I wonder: What are the end goals of our
anti-doping crusade in sports? And has that crusade fallen
hopelessly behind the times?

By today's standards, if most of us non-athletes took a random
doping test, we'd probably fail it. Few consider this to be morally
troublesome. For most of us, human enhancement is an essential part
of daily life: We enjoy ultra-whitening toothpaste, vitamins,
anti-aging skin cream, daily doses of caffeine and much more. We're
already enhancement junkies. So why should athletes be restricted in
carrying out their daily tasks -- such as breaking world records --
when the rest of us are unimped in gaining a competitive edge at the
office by, say, drinking coffee?

The way technology is being integrated into athletics lags behind
the way the rest of society treats new discoveries, in part because
the sports world's policies on enhancement are still committed to
the venerable ideal of all-natural human performance. But this
notion is a charade: Athletes are already highly dependent on all
manner of technology, including aerodynamic uniforms and carefully
calibrated nutrition supplements.

So let's own up to the truth. We cherish elite athletes because they
provide extraordinary performances. We want to jump to our feet,
cheering the latest world record or impossible come-from-behind
victory. I encourage my fellow spectators in Beijing not to bemoan
the demise of traditional sports. Rather, let us celebrate the rise
of a new age of genuinely superhuman athletes, where the rules of
sports are governed not by ever-present but ultimately unreliable
doping police, but by a genuine concern for optimizing excellence. As 
technology gets better, athletes should, too.

Athletic performance is inherently technological. Athletes use
scientifically designed equipment and scientific knowledge to
develop their technique.

Take, for example, the high jump. Not only do shoe companies
reliably roll out the newest, lightest-weight shoes every year, but
the modern technique itself is an example of biomechanical knowledge
in practice. It's called the "Fosbury Flop," after American Dick
Fosbury, who won gold in the 1968 Games by turning his back to the
bar and projecting himself over it head, not feet, first.

A more recent innovation are "altitude chambers," artificial
environments that simulate differing levels of altitude. These
chambers have effects on an athlete's biology that mimic some
methods of doping, although they remain legal, for now.

In this, the age of enhancement, new technologies enter elite sports
preparation all the time. And more are coming, such as leg
extensions using reconstructive surgery, or standard surgical
procedures that translate into improved performance on the field.

Consider Tommy John surgery, an operation named for the pitcher who
was the first to undergo this specific procedure to repair torn
elbow ligaments. Athletes who need a Tommy John operation face the
hard choice between never competing again or undergoing invasive
surgery and strenuous rehabilitation. But there is a silver lining
for those who go under the knife: Some athletes report returning to
the field pitching harder and faster than before they were injured.
How far a leap is it to imagine athletes undergoing such surgery
prior to injury to reinforce their biological capabilities?

If a scalpel seems too extreme, how about a high-tech glove? This is
just one of the new devices used by some Olympic-level athletes to
combat fatigue. It's a radical cooling device that maximizes the
transfer of heat through the palms of the hands. It mechanically
draws blood into the arteries and veins of the hands, reducing heat
buildup that can decrease athletic performance in any sport.

Steroids are decidedly not on this list of innovations. That's
because they are synthetic drugs that can radically alter the
chemical make-up of a competitor's body. Tailor-made treatments,
based on genetic modifications, and new medical enhancement
techniques promise a safer form of technology than the synthetic
substances that are widely -- and justifiably -- despised in the
athletic community.

But that key distinction is a difficult one to draw because the use
of illegal performance enhancements remains one of the most
secretive practices in elite sports competition. What's illegal, how
to test for it, what can give someone an edge and isn't banned yet
-- all these questions are kept under wraps. It's time to end that.
We need to abolish our current anti-doping rules and embrace a
performance policy that recognizes the merit of using human
enhancements.

I know this sounds like a call to arms that few will heed. That's
because we don't really know what we want from sports.

On the Olympic stage, we revere the tradition of the amateur
athlete. The archetype of this sporting hero arose in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries and was made popular by the inspirational
finishes (and soaring soundtrack) of "Chariots of Fire." This
athlete works hard, is naturally gifted and exploits those gifts to
their greatest potential.

But today, another vision is shoving that one aside at sports'
highest levels. It is rooted in the democratization of technology --
in a world where high-tech training regimens exist even at the
junior-varsity level -- and is part of a broader transition we are
all making: using technology to improve everything, at every level.

Both visions -- the amateur athlete and the high-tech hero -- are
dedicated to athletic excellence. They differ, however, in how they
define this term. For the former, technology compromises and
overshadows the natural athlete. For the latter, technology is a
part of the natural athlete. The clash of these values is at the
heart of the debate on doping, which is often overshadowed by
discussions about fair play. I'm all for the high-tech hero. She's
the future.

But how to get to that open culture? Ironically, gene doping, the
current biggest challenge in keeping sports "clean," could lead the
way.

Gene doping is a broad term for the manipulation of a person's
genetic structure to improve performance. Athletes literally change
their genetic material en route to a faster finish. One typical
example of gene doping involves the alteration of a protein that
stimulates cell growth, increasing muscle capacity. This is the
cutting edge of enhancement, what Olympic officials are most
concerned about in Beijing. But testing for it conclusively is
impossible. As this becomes the enhancement of choice, the
anti-doping strategy must shift. The world of sports should become
more concerned with managing health risks than with policing every
enhancement effort.

We want athletes to break world records. We want them to remain
extraordinary. So the increased use of human-enhancement
technologies will become a necessity, perhaps even an obligation.
Just read any roster of your favorite athletic stars: Many suffer
vast numbers of injuries at the height of their careers or later. We
should not be trying in vain to prevent human enhancement in sports;
we should be using technology to protect athletes from the harsh
conditions of elite performance.

That makes many fans shudder. I've heard people articulate this fear
before: It's a remnant of a vision of the "natural" era of sport
history, embedded within a deeper anxiety about bodily
transformation.

These concerns have led us to a bizarre, illogical stalemate: We
embrace all those enhancements that we have deemed a reasonable
extension of natural ability, and we carefully regulate those that
we haven't. Synthetic drugs should still, I believe, be regulated. I
am not arguing for a spirit of anything goes. The point is to
recognize that what's important within sports is the degree to which
athletes are competing on a level playing field, where everyone is
free to choose the enhancements that best accentuate their
performance. That is what the natural athlete should look like
today.

There's no better place to consider this concept of the natural
athlete than Olympia, Greece. That's where I was last week, speaking
about social justice at the International Olympic Academy, not far
from where the ancient Games took place and where the heart of Baron
Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, is buried.
Strolling around the ancient stadium, I thought back to that early
competition, but not for some meditation on the lost purity of
sport. No, I was thinking of the research showing that even the
classical gods of sports sought a little help themselves: They
consumed performance-enhancing mushrooms and other such substances
to gain a competitive edge.

If some lingering reverence for the idealized "natural athlete" of
the past still locks us into today's dubious anti-doping laws, the
2004 Summer Olympics should have helped chip away at that flawed
vision, or at least shown that athletes do not, as a whole, share
these concerns. During those games, several contestants in the shot
put -- the only event that actually took place in Olympia's ancient
stadium -- including the female gold medalist, were brought up on
doping charges.

email at andymiah.net

Andy Miah, the author of "Genetically Modified Athletes," teaches at
the University of the West of Scotland.