Athletes use drugs to enhance their performances, scientists devise tests to identify those drugs, then the athletes move on to more sophisticated doping techniques. Now, the rules of the game may be changing, leaving the Olympic committee even further behind. Concerned that athletes would soon employ genetic engineering in attempting to run faster, to jump higher and to throw farther, the I.O.C. and the affiliated World Anti-Doping Agency are about to convene inaugural meetings on the subject.
Genes serve as a script that directs the body to make proteins.
It seems fantastic today to think that injecting a gene could result in more fast-twitch muscle fibers, enabling a sprinter to run 100 meters in six seconds instead of just under 10. Or injecting a gene that could increase oxygen-carrying capacity so that a marathoner could run 26.2 miles in one and a half hours instead of just over two. Some scientists and Olympic committee officials believe genetic engineering in sports is a decade away. Some believe it may appear in two years. Still others believe crude forms might already be in use, at great health risk to athletes.