Physical supremacy has always played a large part in sport and the desire to win at any cost has led to widespread misuse of artificial substances. With the recent scientific discoveries in DNA mapping, athletes could potentially see a huge transformation in both their physique and performance.
Essentially, humans are 99.9 per cent the same. By decoding DNA, scientists are now able to identify the genes that make us that 0.1 per cent unique. According to one genetic scientist, Francis Fukuyama, this discovery will allow science to create a super human being.
The highest level of competition in sport is often fought off the field. It's well documented that some elite athletes will stop at nothing to gain a competitive edge. The financial gain from an Olympic medal or professional contract is so prized that such athletes willingly risk everything, including their lives, to be the best.
At the recent Sydney Olympics, scientists predicted that in the near future the use of hormones such as EPO (erithropotein-a hormone, used by endurance athletes to increase red blood cell count and therefore oxygen uptake) or anabolic steroids (used to increase strength and power) would make way for genetic manipulation.
Scientists believe that within 10 years gene therapy will allow athletes to tailor their bodies. Currently, embryos are being screened for favourable traits and doctors will be able to add artificial chromosomes to a parent's DNA. Scientists have already injected a certain gene into mice, causing their muscle mass to increase by 60 per cent. Possibly through a vaccine, genetic alteration may well change the muscle's structure. The International Olympic Committee has asked the same scientists to help find a way of detecting genetic manipulation. This may be difficult as injecting a gene is virtually undetectable. At present, the only way to detect gene manipulation is through a muscle biopsy (where part of the muscle is removed) and very few athletes would recover from such an operation in time to compete.
How exactly is genetic manipulation going to create super athletes? Success in sport is the direct result of specific genes interacting with the training environment. No matter how many physical genes you have, you still have to train to develop your natural abilities. Even more importantly, an athlete must train specifically for a given sport. It's how individuals respond to this training that varies in each athlete. According to scientists, genetics are more responsible for structural characteristics such as height and weight and less important for functional characteristics, which are more influenced by the type of training.
