[tt] NYT: With Drug Testing System Broken, Let Olympic Games Be Doped

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With Drug Testing System Broken, Let Olympic Games Be Doped
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/science/12tier.html

By JOHN TIERNEY

Once upon a time, the lords of the Olympic Games believed that the
only true champion was an amateur, a gentleman hobbyist untainted by
commerce. Today they enforce a different ideal. The winners of the
gold medals are supposed to be natural athletes, untainted by
technology. After enough "scandals," the amateur myth eventually
died of its own absurdity. The natural myth is still alive in
Beijing, but it's becoming so far-fetched -- and potentially
dangerous -- that some scientists and ethicists would like to
abandon it, too.

What if we let athletes do whatever they wanted to excel?

Before you dismiss this notion, consider what we're stuck with
today. The system is ostensibly designed to create a level playing
field, protect athletes' health and set an example for children, but
it fails on all counts.

The journal Nature, in an editorial in the current issue, complains
that "antidoping authorities have fostered a sporting culture of
suspicion, secrecy and fear" by relying on unscientifically
calibrated tests, like the unreliable test for synthetic
testosterone
that cost Floyd Landis his 2006 Tour de France victory. Even if the
authorities manage to correct their tests, they can't possibly keep
up with the accelerating advances in biology. Some athletes are
already considering new drugs like Aicar and GW1516, which made news
recently when researchers at the Salk Institute used them to quickly
turn couch-potato mice into treadmill champions with new, strong
muscles.

"There's a possibility that athletes in this Olympics will be using
these drugs," said Ronald Evans, the leader of the team at Salk, who
has been fending off inquiries from athletes about these drugs. He
has advised the antidoping authorities on how to detect these drugs,
but whether they'll be able do it competently this Olympics is far
from clear.

The authorities will have even less of a chance of catching athletes
who move beyond drugs and hormones to "gene doping" -- inserting
genes in their DNA that could increase strength and endurance
without leaving telltale chemicals in the bloodstream.

There's no proof that this would work, but that won't stop
competitors. As Science News reported, a track coach in Germany was
caught looking for Repoxygen, an experimental virus used to insert a
gene into DNA.

So what we have now is not a level playing field. The system
punishes some innocent athletes and rewards others with the savvy
and the connections not to get caught. The more that the authorities
crack down on known forms of enhancement, the more incentive
athletes have to experiment with new ones -- and to get their advice
from black-market dealers instead of doctors.

If athletes didn't have to cheat to win, they and society would be
better off, says Bengt Kayser, the director of a sports medicine
institute at the University of Geneva. In a 2005 article in The
Lancet, he and two bioethicists argued that legalizing doping would
"encourage more sensible, informed use of drugs in amateur sport,
leading to an overall decline in the rate of health problems
associated with doping."

In the British Medical Journal last month, more than 30 scholars
signed a statement supporting an article co-authored by Dr. Kayser
calling the current system a failure that needs to be changed. The
article also criticized the medical authorities for undermining
their credibility with "prophylactic lies" that exaggerate the
dangers of drugs like anabolic steroids based "on scant evidence
tainted by a misguided moralistic motivation to protect sports."

No one denies that there are risks in taking drugs like anabolic
steroids, and there is wide agreement that minors shouldn't be
allowed to take them (or other performance drugs). But the popular
fear of steroid use by adults is based in large part on a few
sensationalized cases, like the news articles blaming steroids for
the fatal brain tumor of Lyle Alzado, the former football player.

"You'd be on firmer scientific ground blaming his brain cancer on
beer drinking," said Norman Fost, a professor of pediatrics and
bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. "The claims of the common
fatal or irreversible harms of anabolic steroids are without any
medical foundation. There's no reason to think the risk of injury or
death is as high as the risk from simply playing sports like
football or baseball."

It's possible, of course, that gene doping or other techniques could
turn out to be much riskier. But is that a reason to ban them?
Society has always allowed explorers and adventurers to take risks
in exchange for glory. The climbers who died on K2 this month
ascended it knowing that one climber dies for every four who scale
it.

If elite adult athletes were allowed to push the limits of human
performance in return for glory, they might point the way for lesser
mortals to coax more out of their bodies. If a 50-year-old sprinter
could figure out how to run as fast as her 25-year-old self, that
could be useful to aging weekend warriors -- or any aging couch
potato.

I'd like to see what would happen if someone started a new
anything-goes competition for athletes over 25. If you have any
ideas for how to run it or what to call it -- MaxMatch? UltraSports?
Mutant Games? -- submit them at nytimes.com/tierneylab. Maybe fans
would object to these "unnatural" athletes. But maybe not. The fans,
after all, include people with laser-corrected eyes, chemically
whitened teeth and surgically enhanced anatomies. Not to mention the
pharmacopeia coursing through our veins.

We all know the body can be improved. We all know Olympic athletes
have the highest-functioning bodies in the world. They can call
themselves natural, just as they used to call themselves amateurs,
but at some point that claim may seem the most unnatural thing of
all.