Invalid Link Removed
Lee Sweeney, who works on therapies to treat muscular dystrophy by targeting IGF1, at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, USA), said, "It has made me more aware of the potential abuses of what we are doing. Certainly, we are not designing this for healthy athletes." Indeed, gene doping carries considerable health risks. "This research was designed for very sick people, people that are dying. It's highly experimental," explained Angela Schneider, President of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport. "It can have an effect on a healthy body as well, increasing its capacity; however, only [in exchange for] very high risk."
Hidde Haisma, Professor at the Groningen Centre for Pharmacy in the Netherlands and President of the Dutch Society for Gene Therapy, explained, genetic enhancements would not be as tightly regulated as other endogenous processes. "Once you introduce it to the body, in general it is turned on and so far we don't have a good regulatory system to turn it on and off," he said. "The highest risk for the athlete is overdose. And that is the same for EPO, IGF1 or other target genes." Alain Fischer, who works at the Necker Hospital in Paris, France, and who successfully used gene therapy to treat a severe form of immunodeficiency, agrees. "Only people who are dying would have reasonable grounds for using it," he said. "Using gene therapy for [doping] is ethically unacceptable and scientifically stupid."
