Gene Doping Conference Makes Headlines
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky December 24, 2008
Biopolitical Times
The prospect of gene doping by athletes is widely condemned, and has been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Olympic Committee. But a few "pro-doping" advocates regularly make the news [1, 2], as they did at a conference last week called "The Coming Age of the Uber-Athlete: What's So Bad about Gene Enhancement and Doping?"
The event was sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank that's been described as "one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy." AEI Visiting Fellow Jon Entine opened the conference and moderated one of its panels. He is the author of the provocative book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It, and has speculated about "Jewish intelligence genes."
Among the speakers opposing gene doping were representatives of the US Anti-Doping Agency and the US Olympic Committee, and an Olympic champion hurdler who asked,
The event was sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank that's been described as "one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy." AEI Visiting Fellow Jon Entine opened the conference and moderated one of its panels. He is the author of the provocative book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It, and has speculated about "Jewish intelligence genes."
Among the speakers opposing gene doping were representatives of the US Anti-Doping Agency and the US Olympic Committee, and an Olympic champion hurdler who asked,
"How do you feel if it's your son or your daughter who wants to be an Olympian? Would you let your kid or your grandchild take what they have to take? Or do what they have to do?"
Theodore Friedmann, a University of California San Diego human gene therapy researcher who has been writing about the risks of gene doping in sports for several years, said that nobody knows whether athletes are currently attempting gene doping.
As to its risks, Friedmann said bluntly, "People are injured. People die.[Gene transfer] should be reserved for treatment of people with serious diseases."
Previously on Biopolitical Times: