DNA Editing: Doping of the Future?

So if we know that someone is susceptible

to a certain injury, maybe we can change that.

Maybe we can correct their DNA so that they're

no longer susceptible to that.

How far are we willing to go to improve a player?

People have been trying to do gene therapy

for a long time now.

Yeah.

This is a new way of doing gene therapy.

Instead of delivering it through a virus,

as people have tried before,

you can use this new CRISPR-Cas9 system.

But thinking about what that might be for athletics,

if we understand the genetic determinants of human

athletic performance,

someone, somewhere

is going to be thinking of how gene editing could be

used to enhance performance.

There will be some that are willing to take the risk,

and be kind of guinea pigs, and experiment on themselves,

and try this out.

Because the benefit could be so high.

I assume that in the same way that drug testing is

performed today, maybe in a future world,

we might be thinking of looking for signs of

gene editing.

But certainly, it's a little bit of a scary thought.

The excitement around that is that we could take a

particular cell line that has a disease mutation in it,

and edit it back to normal.

Of course, people immediately make the jump to

if someone has a disease, maybe we can edit that back

to normal.

And that seems like something that might be worthwhile,

though in general, we have to be very cautious in using the

technology, because nothing is 100% specific,

and who know what the other effects are.

But perhaps the biggest question isn't necessarily

whether or not this is the right thing to do,

but whether or not it will get done.

So, are there going to be health risks of editing your DNA?

Almost certainly.

But are people going to do it?

Probably.