The Ethics of Gene Doping: A Survey of Elite Athletes and Academic Professionals

Abstract

With the advent of genome-wide association studies more is known about genes that influence performance and health-related fitness. Gene therapy has the potential to be abused for performance gain by athletes. This is called gene doping. At the moment there is little known about the opinions of athletes and professionals with regard to the use of gene doping for performance gain. Therefore we found it useful to query the opinions of elite athletes at the Catholic University of Louvain and the professors working at the Faculty of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences. We received 75 questionnaires, corresponding to a response rate of 56%. We used SAS Enterprise Guide 4 for the statistical analysis. We performed a frequency analysis and the data were tested using a bilateral Wilcoxon-MannWhitney U test at a significance level of 0.05 to check for differences. We found that a majority of the respondents had already heard of gene doping. Also, people believed it to be a health risk. People thought that pressure from the environment was an important reason why athletes might use gene doping. Gene doping was also considered a threat to fair play.

Critical Legal Reading of World Anti-Doping Agency’s Gene Doping Guidance

“…33 The dissimilarity between genetic treatment and gene doping is that the latter is not used to replace a missing or non-working protein in a sick person, simply to unnaturally permute the code of a gene in a non-sick individual. 34 From a simplistic point of view … 'Gene doping' can be described as the transmission of genetic matter in purpose to enhance sportive performance. 35 For my part, I am inclined to the opinion reached in this definition as this definition summarises motivations behind the non-therapeutic use of gene therapy technologies in sports.…”