Michael Phelps, ayer en el Cubo de Agua de Beijing 2008, trás ganar su segunda medalla de oro.Ya lo hacen con ejercicio, dietas, claro está. Pero por qué no dejarlos usar nuevas drogas pregunta John Tierny en el New York Times de hoy. De hecho argumenta el régimen actual de supervisión no funciona, ya que muchos examenes no son en sí científicos. Yo soy ambivalente sobre el tema: ¿pureza deportiva o juegos mutantes? Ambas posibilidades me atraen. Copio un fragmento:
Let the Games Be Doped
Once upon a time, the lords of the Olympic Games believed that the only true champion was an amateur, a gentleman hobbyist untainted by commerce. Today they enforce a different ideal. The winners of the gold medals are supposed to be natural athletes, untainted by technology. After enough “scandals,” the amateur myth eventually died of its own absurdity. The natural myth is still alive in Beijing, but it’s becoming so far-fetched — and potentially dangerous — that some scientists and ethicists would like to abandon it, too.
What if we let athletes do whatever they wanted to excel?
Before you dismiss this notion, consider what we’re stuck with today. The system is ostensibly designed to create a level playing field, protect athletes’ health and set an example for children, but it fails on all counts.
The journal Nature, in an editorial in the current issue, complains that “antidoping authorities have fostered a sporting culture of suspicion, secrecy and fear” by relying on unscientifically calibrated tests, like the unreliable test for synthetic testosterone that cost Floyd Landis his 2006 Tour de France victory. Even if the authorities manage to correct their tests, they can’t possibly keep up with the accelerating advances in biology. Some athletes are already considering new drugs like Aicar and GW1516, which made news recently when researchers at the Salk Institute used them to quickly turn couch-potato mice into treadmill champions with new, strong muscles.
“There’s a possibility that athletes in this Olympics will be using these drugs,” said Ronald Evans, the leader of the team at Salk, who has been fending off inquiries from athletes about these drugs. He has advised the antidoping authorities on how to detect these drugs, but whether they’ll be able do it competently this Olympics is far from clear.
The authorities will have even less of a chance of catching athletes who move beyond drugs and hormones to “gene doping” — inserting genes in their DNA that could increase strength and endurance without leaving telltale chemicals in the bloodstream.
There’s no proof that this would work, but that won’t stop competitors. As Science News reported, a track coach in Germany was caught looking for Repoxygen, an experimental virus used to insert a gene into DNA.
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