Gary Neill
UK sprinter Dwain Chambers faces the race of his life next month, as he attempts to win an Olympic medal at the 2012 games in London — and complete a long journey back from the disgrace of his 2003 suspension for doping.
Chambers, who has devoted much of his time since then to persuading others to steer clear of performance-enhancing drugs, has admitted to using six different substances banned by the sporting authorities. These included two anabolic steroids — a designer drug and a testosterone cream — to accelerate recovery; the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which increases production of red blood cells, to allow him to do more repetitions in training; human growth hormone for recovery; a thyroid hormone called liothyronine to decrease sluggishness; and a narcolepsy drug called modafinil to increase mental alertness and reaction time.
The quest for ultimate enhancement is as old as the games: the Greek physician Galen passed on knowledge from the ancient games to the Romans, praising the effects of eating herbs, mushrooms and testicles. But Chambers’ story is just one example of how today’s competitors are taking that quest to a whole new level.
“There’s an arms-race quality to performance-enhancing technologies in sport,” says Thomas Murray, former president of the Hastings Center, a bioethics and public-policy foundation in Garrison, New York.
An amateur cyclist, Murray is among the many sports fans appalled by the seemingly endless string of doping scandals that result. “I could probably do a four-mile climb much better with EPO,” he says, “but I could also do it much better if I put a motor on my bike.” That’s not the point of sport, he says, and neither are drugs — an attitude shared by the International Olympic Committee and just about every other professional and amateur sports organization.
But others argue that enhancers have become so prevalent that the only realistic option is for the sporting authorities to let athletes use what they want, as long as they do it safely.
“If the goal is to protect health, then medically supervised doping is likely to be a better route,” says Andy Miah, a bioethicist at the University of the West of Scotland in Ayr. “Better yet, the world of sport should complement the World Anti-Doping Agency with a World Pro-Doping Agency, the goal of which is to invest in safer forms of enhancement.”
Science alone cannot resolve the ethical conundrum presented by this debate. But it can shed light on the purely technical question: if performance-enhancing techniques were allowed, how far could the human body go?
Power pills
For strength and power, the best-known drugs are probably those in the vast family of anabolic steroids, a group that is constantly expanding as the structures get slight modifications in a bid to evade detection in drug tests. “There are about 2,000 different tweaks you could do to a steroid molecule that would all probably make you big and strong,” says Don Catlin, a pharmacologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. The compounds mimic the way testosterone works in the body, triggering protein synthesis and building more muscle tissue. A course of steroids combined with exercise can translate to a 38% increase in strength in men, potentially more in women.
Another popular strength enhancer is human growth hormone, which increases levels of the protein insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1). This spurs muscle growth, although it is debatable whether or not that growth actually does increase strength. In the only study to show positive effects in recreational athletes1, those taking human growth hormone saw their sprinting capacity increase by 4%. That may seem small, but it could make all the difference for, say, a 50-metres freestyle swimmer or a 100-metres sprinter, says Kenneth Ho, an endocrinologist at the University of Queensland in St Lucia, Australia, who co-authored the study. “If you look at what breaks records, it comes down to 0.01 of a second.”
In endurance sports, in which strength is less important than increased stamina, athletes can get dramatic results from blood doping, which aims to increase the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. They can accomplish this through blood-cell transfusions or by taking EPO. In one study2, blood doping increased normal humans’ stamina by 34%, and in another3, it allowed them to run 8 kilometres on a treadmill 44 seconds faster than they could before. And work published last month4 by Max Gassmann and his colleagues at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, there are signs that the hormone has an effect on the brain, increasing an athlete’s motivation to train.
Drugs currently in the pipeline at pharmaceutical companies may also find themselves being co-opted for illicit use by athletes. One family, designed to treat muscular dystrophy and other muscle-wasting disorders, inhibits the activity of myostatin, a protein that keeps muscle growth under control. Similarly, a group of drugs called HIF stabilizers, which are aimed at treating anaemia and kidney disease, regulates a protein that turns on genes for the production of red blood cells, including the gene for EPO. And there may be a part for cognitive enhancers to play, too. “There’s a range of compounds coming out that try to improve the ability to think more clearly when you’re fatigued,” says Chris Cooper, a biochemist at the University of Essex in Colchester, UK.
Improvements don’t just come from the pharmacy. Athletes also rely heavily on nutritional supplements, which are legal. “They’re 98.5% hype,” says Conrad Earnest, an exercise physiologist at the University of Bath, UK. But one supplement that does work for some athletes is creatine, which contributes to the synthesis of the energy carrier molecule ATP during exercise. Earnest estimates that athletes taking creatine could see their performance improve by as much as 8%.
Nature Podcast
Natasha Gilbert talks to Chris Cooper
Another effective supplement is beetroot juice. Researchers at the University of Essex have found that the nitrate present in the juice increases nitric oxide levels in the body, allowing muscles to use oxygen more efficiently. As a result, the team found that divers could hold their breath for 11% longer than normal5, which could help swimmers who want to minimize the number of breaths they take in short-distance events.
Most of these performance enhancements come with a slew of side effects, however. Steroids can cause high blood pressure, thickening of the heart valves, decreased fertility and libido, and changes such as chest hair in women and shrunken testicles in men. And boosting the number of red blood cells thickens the blood, increasing the risk of having a stroke.
Adding to the uncertainty, a number of the drugs are used to treat serious diseases such as cancer, AIDS and muscular dystrophy, so they have been tested largely on desperately ill patients with below- normal levels of growth factors and hormones. It is hard to know how to extrapolate those data to the sports arena, says Cooper. “Elite athletes are very different beasts from normal people in the sense that they’re genetically enhanced,” he says, “because they’ve been selected to be good at what they’re doing and they have a lot of training.”
Furthermore, testing in healthy people — subjecting them to the dosages and combinations that athletes are likely to take — would be an ethical can of worms. Because of that, says Charles Yesalis, an emeritus professor of sports science at Pennsylvania State University in State College, “there’s no way to know what advantages different combinations of steroids, nutritional supplements and specialized diets could produce. It’s a witches’ cauldron.”
Code breaking
Gene doping — enhancing performance by adding or modifying genes — has been the subject of locker-room gossip for the past ten years. There are plenty of natural mutations for which to wish. The Finnish cross-country skier Eero Mäntyranta, who won three gold medals in the early 1960s, had a mutation that made his body’s EPO receptors more efficient. In 2004, a toddler made headlines for having a mutation that disabled myostatin, giving him the physique of a petite body builder. And the gene that encodes angotensin-converting enzyme, which has been hailed as the gene for physical performance, has one variation known to boost endurance by increasing oxygen delivery capacity and capillary density, and another that is associated with muscle growth and strength6, 7.
Gary Neill
Advances in gene therapy could one day make it possible for any athlete to enhance their DNA. For example, in experiments aimed at treating muscular dystrophy in the elderly, a group led by physiologist Lee Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia introduced a gene to cause over-expression of IGF1 in mice. The treatment boosted muscle strength of young adult mice by 14%, earning the rodents the nickname ‘mighty mice’8.
Other researchers are turning genes on and off with drugs. In 2008, Ronald Evans and his colleagues at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, worked with GW1516, a drug that activates a gene that increases the ratio of ‘slow-twitch’ to ‘fast-twitch’ fibres in muscle. As the names suggest, slow-twitch fibres contract more slowly than fast-twitch, but they are more efficient at aerobic activity. Evans and his team found9 that in mice, GW1516 combined with exercise increased the rodents’ endurance by 70%.
However, both Evans and Sweeney are sceptical about how useful athletes will find such therapies. “In humans, I expect the same general relationship — the under-exercised will be the ones who will have the most benefit from exercise mimetics,” says Evans. “My view is that endurance athletes are physically advantaged and will have the least benefits.”
Gene therapy has its share of health risks, including potentially severe immune reactions to the viruses used to ferry genetic material into cells. The results may also be hard to control. “If you’re going to turn a gene for something like EPO on, you better be able to turn it off,” warns Catlin. Gene doping, he says, “is not a good idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s out there trying it”.
Human 2.0
Drugs are not the only way to potentially enhance performance. Surgery and, ultimately, technological augmentations could also help athletes towards the podium. Baseball pitchers who have undergone surgery to replace a damaged elbow ligament with tissue from a hamstring or forearm tendon claim that they can throw harder after the two-year rehabilitation process. But Scott Rodeo, an orthopaedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, warns that the science doesn’t back up the stories. “To truly say you’re making this elbow better would be a bit of a stretch,” says Rodeo.
Replacing entire joints would be unlikely to work for an elite athlete: too many screws could come loose and the artificial joint wouldn’t quite match the mechanics of a natural one. The materials would also wear out within a few years under the physical demands of elite sport. Still, Rodeo says, that assessment could change if researchers make major advances in engineering skin, tendons and other replacement body parts in the laboratory.
Miah sees potential in more imaginative surgical enhancement. “Consider using skin grafts to increase webbing between fingers and toes to improve swimming capacity,” he says. “These kinds of tweaks to our biology are likely ways that people would try to gain an edge over others.” Another frontier is nanotechnology, adds Miah. Researchers are already experimenting with blood supplements based on oxygen-carrying nanoparticles for use in emergency situations. From there, he says, “there is a lot of discussion about the possibility of biologically infused nanodevices that could perpetually maintain certain thresholds of performance”.
Mechanical prosthetics are already a reality, such as the ‘cheetah-style’ legs used by amputees including Oscar Pistorius from South Africa, a Paralympic gold medallist who was approved this month to run in the 2012 Olympics. But scientists are split on whether current artificial limbs actually confer an advantage over the flesh and blood variety.
Bryce Dyer, a prosthetic engineer at the University of Bournemouth, UK, explains that although Pistorius’s spring-like prosthetics allow him to speed up at the end of a race, they put him at a disadvantage coming out of the crouch at the start of a race or when turning a curve. “When he’s running straight ahead, he eventually hits a natural state of harmony like bouncing on a trampoline,” says Dyer, “but then he sometimes runs right off the track because he can’t turn.”
Pistorius’s prosthetics lack the stiffness of a human ankle and can’t generate the same forces as they hit the ground. To get around this, Pistorius pumps his legs faster. “It’s a biomechanically distinct way of running fast, but there’s no evidence that it’s advantageous,” says Hugh Herr, a biomechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.
Technology might get around these problems. “Stepping decades into the future, I think one day the field will produce a bionic limb that’s so sophisticated that it truly emulates biological limb function. That technology will be the Olympic sanctioned limb,” says Herr, whose lab at MIT is currently working on a bionic running leg. “Without any such human-like constraints, the Paralympics limb will become [the basis of] this human–machine sport like racecar driving.”
According to Herr, performance-enhancing technologies will advance to a point at which they will not only extend human limits, they will demand an Olympics all of their own. “For each one there will be a new sport — power running, and power swimming, and power climbing,” projects Herr. “Just like the invention of the bicycle led to the sport of cycling. What we’ll see is the emergence of all kinds of new sports.”
- Journal name:
- Nature
- Volume:
- 487,
- Pages:
- 287–289
- Date published:
- ()
- DOI:
- doi:10.1038/487287a
although ethicists have argued that it is little different from the use of new materials in the construction of suits and sporting equipment, which similarly aid performance and can give competitors an unfair advantage over others. The reasons for the ban are mainly the alleged health risks of performance-enhancing drugs, the equality of opportunity for athletes, and the alleged exemplary effect of clean(doping-free) sports for the public. Car Audio Forums
The use of banned performance-enhancing drugs in sport(s) is commonly referred to as doping, particularly by those organizations that regulate competitions. The use of drugs to enhance performance is considered unethical by most international sports organizations and especially the International Olympic Committee.
I think that we should be careful when pushing the limits. Its seems very promising to make people perform better, but we dont know the long term and because they are relatively new and the effects are long term, than much is none is known about it. So we should be careful about allowing these substances. It should only allowed if extensive research had been made. Ron perkins
I agree with all of the above it will just get worse. performance enhancement
This is going to get worse and worse as technology advances
http://funninja.in/games/chota-bheem-games/
<a href="http://funninja.in/games/chota-bheem-games/">chota bheem games</a>
chota bheem games
He has a bad lot, but is recovering. If you decide to exercise some influence new athletes not to fall into the same error that he, who decided to stay perfect for the evidence, but neither of them can participate. I am an athlete and do karate competitions. One day I decided to become stronger than my opponents and started using steroids to handle my strength in fights. I do not advise any athlete to manipulate his body, you will have the results in competitions. Human beings were not created to override what Nature gave. If a human cannot lift more weight than his limits, there is a rational reason. The smallest being is, the more powerful is. Insects are much stronger than humans.In nature, we have similar examples of that. For example, butterflies are very strong insects. They can move their wings so fast, that a human being would need arms 10x bigger than normal to flip the wings. More information about butterflies capability are in my blog Panapana .Feel free to read and comment.
we can find information on that on google
nice work Helen, but does that have anything to do with Muscle imbalances ,Since muscles are on the outer layers, it makes a sense to first consider that maybe there’s a muscle imbalance occurring. Usually it’s a high left or right pelvis that starts to shift all the other associated ligaments and tendons, stretching or pulling them in a direction they don’t want to go that's considered one of the main <a href="http://www.lowerbackpainguide.org/lower-back-pain-left-side.html">back pain left side</a> besides many other causes.
Thanks for the wonderful information, but I was wondering is there any relation between running and "back pain left side" :http://www.lowerbackpainguide.org/lower-back-pain-left-side.html
i agree If the goal is to protect health, then medically supervised doping is likely to be a better route Denturist in Bracebridge
There are several remedies that are branded as drug and that really has satisfactory effects, which are not bad health and are branded as doping, think who need to review these concepts doping because scientists can develop drugs that always end up doing well for us humans. Glasgow airport cab
Very nice we blog and useful! I feel i will come back one day! The quest for ultimate enhancement is as old as the games: the Greek physician Galen passed on knowledge from the ancient games to the Romans, praising the effects of eating herbs, mushrooms and testicles. But Chambers’ story is just one example of how today’s competitors are taking that quest to a whole new level.
Thanks.
fussball live
thank you for a great insight
More concerned in the long term effects such as intense lower back pain . Also what about TRT therapy in athletes which I believe to be more of an unfair advantage! 40 year olds like a 20 year old. Old time athletes never did this. These people better learn how to test for diabetes with all the things they do to their body.
After the whole debacle with Lance Armstrong, I'm surprised that organizations aren't already picketing on the streets in protest of these futuristic human upgrades. With that said, I do think it's pretty crazy that so many athletes are NOW talking about their use of performance enhancers. Back in the 90s, most sports fans would have never expected so many athletes to use steroids. In any case, you can reach me at my Chihuahua Clothes if you want to talk more about it. Thanks!
Thanks for posting this informative article. I haven’t any word to appreciate this post. tyvek event wristbands
Doping should be allowed. Most sports these days are for entertainment purposes only so why not allow athletes to do everything in their power to be the best they can be? Just a thought what it is i understanding
yes agree with you about this article....
I appreciate spending some time to talk about that, San Diego bail bonds I believe firmly regarding this and so really enjoy understanding more about this kind of subject.Keep up the good.
Today doping is the big problems in sport and there are no action going to be taken.Its total illegal.bad hearing about Dwain Chambers who found suffered from doping.It should be stopped soon.
http://www.dermavita.com/laser-hair-removal Hair Removal
Perfect piece of writing rich in information. I have been looking for such a post for a long time. Thanks again. joelocal
Fantastic and interesting which we talk about with you so i think so it is very useful and knowledgeable. I would like to thank you for the projects.cialis I am tiring the same best execute from me later on as well.
Doping should be allowed. Most sports these days are for entertainment purposes only so why not allow athletes to do everything in their power to be the best they can be? Just a thought. locksmith orlando
Honestly I think there is a downside, but there is also the good side, this is science, there are several remedies that are branded as drug and that really has satisfactory effects, which are not bad health and are branded as doping, think who need to review these concepts doping because scientists can develop drugs that always end up doing well for us humans
massagem tantrica
aeronaves a venda
Athletes arrive at the limit of human body
If we stop to analyze the football 20 years ago, the games were slower, as well as the jumps in basketball were lower. According to the research of Portal Tailandia an evolution in sports Physiology and how it is not possible to genetically modifying people, probably the record rate in games will be shrinking.
Their ideal is superhuman performance, at any cost. ... In this process, athletes remove some blood, and reinject it after their body has made new blood to replace it Floop
Today makes one year that do not perform professional competitions for my mistakes. I do not advise any athlete to want to manipulate your body, you will have the results in competitions. I say and repeat, train hard, sounding a shirt that is much better.<br/>I wrote a book called: Perfection atrophied. Talk about this issue and leaves a lesson for any athlete. And it has an article on the blog [url=http://www.acharlocais.com.br]Achar Locais[/url] feel free to read and comment
Today makes one year that do not perform professional competitions for my mistakes. I do not advise any athlete to want to manipulate your body, you will have the results in competitions. I say and repeat, train hard, sounding a shirt that is much better.<br/>I wrote a book called: Perfection atrophied. Talk about this issue and leaves a lesson for any athlete. And it has an article on the blog <a href="http://www.floop.com.br">Floop</a> feel free to read and comment
What Makes an Elite Athlete?
"There are five components that have influence in human performance," says Phil Cutti, an exercise physiologist and Director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Genetics is the top factor, he says, comprising roughly 25 to 30 percent. The next largest factor is one's body size and composition, then athletic and training history, then age, and finally gender jogos da dora
"That 30 percent umbrella of genetics -- some people are going to be more coordinated or adept at certain sports," Cutti concedes — which is why we aren't all Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. "But I think if you take your average Joe or Jane and find out where their performance [level and] variables are, then address those strengths and weaknesses, you'll have marked improvement."
I do think strict restrictions and regulations put in place by the Sports Authorities aim to stop any hints of cheating in its tracks to preserve sporting integrity and fairness. Yet the war continues to wage. In her article for Nature, Helen Thompson looks at some of the increasingly ingenious ways that medicines are adapted to avoid detection. Rent a Car Romania
Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans predict that the future of sport involves protocols far beyond what would today be called â€্oping” (“Olympics: Genetically enhanced Olympics are coming,” http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7407/full/487297a.html). As horrible as this future might seem for traditional sports fans, it is unavoidable – unless sports associations switch to completely new rules and regulations.
The current regulatory system gives massive rewards to anyone who can stay in front of it (Edward Bird and Gert G. Wagner, “Sport as a Common Property Resource: A Solution to the Dilemmas of Doping.”Journal of Conflict Resolution. Vol. 41(6), December 1997, 749-66). An athlete who discovers a new drug that cannot be detected with the current control technology earns huge returns: She wins the race and goes unpunished. The system thus provides a tremendous incentive to do exactly what the system wants people not to do: Develop new drugs, not on the current ban list. Use those drugs heavily. Win. Helen Thompson’s article (“Superhuman Athletes,” Helen Thompson, Nature, v. 487 pp. 287-289) lists many new drugs and methods.
The suggestions we make are echoed in the article by Enriquez and Gullans, who suggest a general lifting of negative-list regulation. However, we did not propose to abandon regulation, but rather to change regulation so that it produces the proper incentives among athletes.
The problem in sport is not science, but secrecy. In the public no one knows what the athletes are doing. Our proposal is simply to stop enforcing the ban of specific kinds of drugs and training methods, and start enforcing the honest reporting of whatever drugs and methods are being used. The anti-doping-committees would not have to search for and ban specific compounds, rather, they would only have to keep watch and report what they find. Anyone doing something secretly could be assumed to be up to no good, and would be accordingly penalized.
Most important, a regime of transparency immediately destroys the current incentive to develop new drugs or secret training methods in order to stay ahead of the current ban-list. A regime of full transparency may or may not result in superhuman athletes, but it would certainly result in honest sport – a precious good that we do not now have.
Edward Castronova, Professor of Telecommunications and Cognitive Science at Indiana University (1229 E. 7th Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47401).
Gert G. Wagner, Max Planck Fellow at the MPI for Human Development, Berlin, and chaiman of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin, Mohrenstrasse 58, Berlin, 10118, Germany).
(Finally, my point (as a self-ironical and -contesting know-it-all ;) ) would be that when one considers life to be determined strictly through scientific criteria, that is, through the mixture of macro and microbiology, chemistry and physics even, things become very difficult. One might even say, that, in a very strict sense, inside science there is no concept of life as we know it. Everything is just physical reactions to physical reactions, everything happens only once. There isn’t even the concept of ability. Nothing is capable of doing something, but is merely doing that precise thing in that precise moment, and cannot do otherwise, or, the doing otherwise happens only randomly on the level of quantum physics, but not as an ability of doing otherwise. But life, we say and think, is an ability. A living organism is capable of staying alive for a moment (and this is the obvious ground for the capabilities of nutrition, breeding, and growing of the plants and animals, and of the abilities of motion, sensing, and desire of the animals, if one agrees with the classification by Aristotle). So, if you start with science, there never can be a “strong emergence” of life, of the concept of life, unless you do not allow the normal, unscientific, human perception to sneak in.) simony lingerie
i also completely disagree with the use of any performance enhancements in athletes. To do so would degrade any achievement made by the athletes. revitol reviews
Their ideal is superhuman performance, at any cost. ... In this process, athletes remove some<br/>blood, and reinject it after their body has made new blood to replace it. ... Far from being<br/>unfair, allowing performance enhancement promotes equality <a href="http://www.jouejogosgratis.com.br/">jogos</a>
							
The Olympics would have to stop that difference. is not right just because a person has a disability that she has to be excluded from a sport that is for everyone ... I'll open a apetição sending <a href="http://www.torpedosgratis.org/"> Torpedos Gratis </ a> for all of Brazil, hope you guys from other countries to do the same as we want the best in this world.
Very nice post, I live in Brazil and yesterday saw a news about the <a href="http://www.torpedosgratis.org/" target="_blank">Torpedos Graits</a> Olympics for the Oscar, the guy with no legs wins the legs and he wants more ... wants to go beyond ... going to Olympics 2016 that will be made here in rio de janeiro, I think pretty much it ... I hope the people of the opportunity for him to succeed ...
In the world of sport human augmentation is something of a hot topic. Words like â€঍oping’, â€঎PO’ and ‘Genetically enhanced’ fly in whispers around changing rooms and training camps. Strict restrictions and regulations put in place by the Sports Authorities aim to stop any hints of cheating in its tracks to preserve sporting integrity and fairness. Yet the war continues to wage. In her article for Nature, Helen Thompson looks at some of the increasingly ingenious ways that medicines are adapted to avoid detection. But where’s the line between the legal and the unnatural? Tv online, Thompson highlights that many athletes “rely heavily on nutritional supplements”, which although totally legal, can “improve performance by as much as 8%.“ When you consider that records are broken with a 0.01 second gap, that’s 8% you can’t afford to loose
Dwain Chambers has a bad lot, but is recovering. You decide to exercise some influence new athletes not to fall into the same error that he, who decided to stay "perfect" for the evidence, but neither of them can particiapar. I am an athlete and realize jiu-jitsu competitions. One day I decided to become stronger than my opponents and started using steroids to handle my strength and concetração in fights, but unfortunately also got caught in the anti-dopin exams. Today makes one year that do not perform professional competitions for my mistakes. I do not advise any athlete to want to manipulate your body, you will have the results in competitions. I say and repeat, train hard, sounding a shirt that is much better.
I wrote a book called: Perfection atrophied. Talk about this issue and leaves a lesson for any athlete. And it has an article on the blog Backlinks feel free to read and comment
Why the comment area for the article "Why great Olympic feats raise suspicions" is not available for readers? From that controversial article, we can see the culture difference, i.e., how people view science differently and how people's writing styles differed in different cultures. I think Ye is just an example and a story for the main points that the authors would like to say. It can be other persons. My hunch is that the authors pick Ye just by chance. But it seems unacceptable for Chinese, especially after the report of the Chinese mass media.
Finally, I hope the website can improve its technical aspects so that it allows more comments. Thanks!
Since I saw Mrs. (for such a bitchy article) Ewen Callaway's distinguished paper, I think it's time for me to submit an article about how the GREAT British cyclist SCIENTIFICALLY won the Gold... and in this way I can get a famous Nature paper too...
Don't you accept it, NATURE??!! SHAME ON YOU.
Why great Olympic feats raise suspicions
'Performance profiling' could help to dispel doubts.
At the Olympics, how fast is too fast? That question has dogged American swimmer Ledecky after the 15-year-old defeated Adlington in the women’s 800-metre freestyle, which revoke the question raised to Ye’s performance. Ledecky has never tested positive for a banned substance. Nature examines whether and how an athlete's performance history and the limits of human physiology could be used to catch dopers.
Was Ledecky’s performance anomalous?
Yes. Her time in the 800 freestyle was more than 20 seconds faster than her time in the same event at a major meet in July 2011, and 5 seconds faster than her personal record a month ago. But what really raised eyebrows was her showing in the first 400m, which she swam faster than Rebecca Adlington and was about 1 second faster than the world record (which was made by performance enhancing swimming suit).
Doesn't a clean drug test during competition rule out the possibility of doping?
No, says Ross Tucker, an exercise physiologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Athletes are much more likely to dope while in training, when drug testing tends to be less rigorous. â€ৎveryone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing,” Tucker says.
Out-of-competition tests are more likely to catch dopers, he says, but it is not feasible to test every elite athlete regularly year-round. Tracking an athlete over time and flagging anomalous performances would help anti-doping authorities to make better use of resources, says Yorck Olaf Schumacher, an exercise physiologist at the Medical University of Freiburg in Germany, who co-authored a 2009 paper proposing that performance profiling be used as an anti-doping tool1. “I think it’s a good way and a cheap way to narrow down a large group of athletes to suspicious ones, because after all, the result of any doping is higher performance,” Schumacher says.
The Olympic biathlon, a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and target shooting, has dabbled in performance profiling. In a pilot project, scientists at the International Biathlon Union in Salzburg, Austria, and the University of Ferrara in Italy, developed a software program that retroactively analysed blood and performance data from 180 biathletes over six years to identify those most likely to have doped2. The biathlon federation now uses the software to target its athletes for drug testing
How would performance be used to nab dopers?
Anti-doping authorities need a better way of flagging anomalous performances or patterns of results, says Schumacher. To do this, sports scientists need to create databases that — sport by sport and event by event — record how athletes improve with age and experience. Longitudinal records of athletes’ performances would then be fed into statistical models to determine the likelihood that they ran or swam too fast, given their past results and the limits of human physiology.
The Olympic biathlon, a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and target shooting, has dabbled in performance profiling. In a pilot project, scientists at the International Biathlon Union in Salzburg, Austria, and the University of Ferrara in Italy, developed a software program that retroactively analysed blood and performance data from 180 biathletes over six years to identify those most likely to have doped2. The biathlon federation now uses the software to target its athletes for drug testing.
Could an athlete then be disciplined simply for performing too well?
“That would be unfair,” says Tucker. “The final verdict is only ever going to be reached by testing. It has to be.” In recent years, cycling authorities have successfully prosecuted athletes for having anomalous blood profiles, even when banned substances such as EPO could not be found. But performance is too far removed from taking a banned substance and influenced by too many outside factors to convict someone of doping, Tucker says. “When we look at this young swimmer from America who makes a history, that’s not proof of anything. It asks a question or two.”
Reference
Ewen Callaway, Nature , 03 August 2012.
http://www.nature.com/news/why-great-olympic-feats-raise-suspicions-1.11109#commenting-terms-condition
I completely disagree with the use of any performance enhancements in athletes. To do so would degrade any achievement made by the athletes. revitol reviews
To help combat doping in sport, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) joined with the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to launch 2 FIELDS 1 GOAL: Protecting the Integrity of Science and Sport campaign.
The campaign creates a framework of collaboration and encourages the voluntary cooperation of IFPMA and BIO member companies with WADA to readily identify compounds with the potential for misuse by athletes and to stop doping in sport. The campaign will allow for the sharing of information between participating companies and WADA in order to develop testing and detection methods to identify illegal or illicit use by athletes.
A critical part of this effort is the Points to Consider: Identification of Compounds with Potential for Doping Abuse and Sharing of Information with WADA booklet. This new resource provides biotechnology companies with practical guidelines to help identify compounds with sports-related doping potential before they come to market. The Points to Consider booklet also helps minimize misuse of compounds during clinical trials, and facilitate the sharing of information and collaboration on communications about medicines with known doping potential.
For a copy of the Points to Consider booklet and campaign materials, please visit www.ifpma.org/ethics/doping-in-sport.html.
Good article, but it should have mentioned the East German doping program and the long term adverse health effects that it had on many of the athletes, despite medical supervision.
Elite athletes are amongst the most objective-focused and driven people on the planet, they also spend years preparing for an Olympic Games. I recall that sometime around 1980, someone published the results of a survey of sportsmen that included the question. I have this compound that will guarantee you Olympic Gold but you will suffer terribly later in life. The majority said that they would use it.
Elite athletes will pressurise their medical advisors to try higher doses or emerging compounds in search of that last 0.1% on performance. Medical supervision will not be sufficient to ensure athlete safety.