Friends of the Earth

Introduction

Friends of the Earth would like to commend the House Government Reform Committee for holding this hearing and for its concern regarding steroid use in baseball. Not only does the committee’s action recognize a frightening trend in sports, but it demonstrates a broader interest in today’s youth, who look to these athletes as role models.

At this crucial time Friends of the Earth would like to urge Congress not only to examine steroid use, but also to look to the even more profound and looming problem of gene doping and genetic engineering of athletes. If left unregulated, gene doping and designer athletes would constitute a radical change in the nature of human beings and could lead to the end of sports as we know it.

Concerns

At the start of 2004, press coverage of the tragic life of East German female athletes revealed that in the 70s government officials dosed very young girls with performance enhancing drugs without their knowledge. A decade later, in the early 1980s, these girls went on to win Olympic gold medals. Now in their late 30s, these women are struggling with their sexual identity and living in bodies ruined by steroids. The Olympic Games in Athens this past summer provided an arena for major embarrassment for the host country when top athlete Tyler Hamilton tested positive for a bizarre and illegal procedure where he had all of his blood replaced.

When the results of the drug scandal involving Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) surfaced, many prominent athletes came under scrutiny. But this tragic record of scandals pales in comparison to what is in store if gene enhancements become available. Gene doping is less detectable because the chemicals involved may well be indistinguishable from their natural counterparts, and a urine or blood test won’t uncover any damning evidence.

Lee Sweeney, chairman of physiology at the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine wrote in Scientific American last July: “the world may be about to watch one of its last Olympic Games without genetically enhanced athletes.” Sweeney is developing gene therapy to deal with muscular dystrophy in the aging population and foresees that once genetic treatments are used widely for this disease, there will be great difficulty in preventing the genetic muscle enhancements from being used by athletes. In a recent piece shown by ESPN, the head of the Olympic Committee admits that we may see the first gene enhanced athletes in Peking 2008.

The pressure to win (to say nothing of gaining lucrative commercial endorsements) continues to build up. Many top athletes have demonstrated their willingness to throw ethical considerations to the wind in order to win, even if the drugs pose life-threatening risks to their health. At the same time, coaches under severe pressure to win give in or look the other way.

And why stop there? Gene therapy can then be taken a step further with designer baby athletes. Many parents will want to give their kids a special boost in strength or speed via the insertion of inheritable traits. What happens when such inheritable genes are put in? How will kids engineered to be athletes handle the pressure this sort of procedure would place on them? What athletic options will be available for kids without enhanced genes? Will parents even want to risk their kids playing with super-strong, designer kids spawned by their neighbors?

Will Athletes Refrain from Gene Doping?

In his February 25, 2005 show, ESPN reporter Tom Farrey described the ongoing genetic modification research at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where they engineered a ‘marathon’ gray mouse called Lance, so named because it just goes and goes without stopping. Farrey reported his conversations with Dr. Ronald Evans, a molecular investigator at the institute: “We can engineer almost any gene and any trait in the mouse permanently as we did with the marathon mice in this study. It is basically a mechanical process that could be done almost in any species. That's for sure," Evans asserted Farrey adds that Evans is confident gene doping is the future of sports because he already has heard from horse trainers and pro athletes who want access to the same drug used on the mice. In a discussion with physiologist Dr. Sweeney (cited above), Farrey was told: "I've gotten so many e-mails with 'potential guinea pig' or 'I want to be your guinea pig’or 'try it on me' as the byline. I even had a couple of coaches contact me early on, which was pretty funny. One high school football coach wanted me to treat his entire team." These comments from scientists should send up alarm bells in this Congress.

Recommendations

Some cynics argue that there is no way to stop this, but those of us who love to play and watch sports ought to make every effort to promote laws and a code of sports ethics with strong prohibitions against “designer athletes.” While a ban on illegal drugs, such as steroids, is a necessity, we urge this Committee to go beyond prohibitions against performance enhancing drugs and look to ways that would outlaw the high-tech cheating that may soon be possible with gene doping. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in its code now has provisions against genetic enhancements of athletes. This WADA code, however, lacks the full range of judicial enforceability. We urge the Committee to look at actions to cover all sports, not just baseball, and not to rely on any one sport to regulate itself.

There is still time to put the cap back on this genie’s scientific bottle. If we don’t, it’s the end of much of sports as we know it. That would break the hearts of more sports fans than any ‘curse’ has ever done.

References

Farrey, T. (2005, February 24). Of Mice and Men. ESPN. Retrieved March 11, 2005, from
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=1999051&type=story

Sokolove, M. (2004, January 18). The Lab Animal. The New York Times Magazine

Sweeney, L. (2004, July). Gene Doping. Scientific American, 63-69.