Can natural talent be manufactured?
It is a question that raises ethical considerations, moral judgments, and that has all sorts of high-tech and biotech answers. I’m in Vancouver for meetings with representatives from the other Genome Centres and Genome B.C. happened to be sponsoring a public forum on gene doping tonight so we all attended.
 With the Olympics only a couple of years away in Vancouver and with the issue of athletes at all levels looking to enhance performance through drug use, it made for an interesting evening.

They had assembled a top quality panel to address the question.
The guests were Dr. Jim Rupert an Associate Professor of Human Kinetics at UBC, Joseph de Pencier a lawyer who until recently was the Director, Ethics and Anti-Doping at the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports, and to get the athlete’s perspective, they had Caitlan Meredith a member of the Canadian National Swim team and who also has a degree in Biology. Definitely a group well suited to offer a broad perspective on the issues.
Back to the question for the evening though.
The answers aren’t exactly straight forward because ultimately there is a level of skill involved and there is the genetics you are born with. As the event was put on by Genome BC the genetic card was in play. What a hand there is to be dealt. Genetics has the possibility to raise performance levels, and in the case of Dr.Rupert’s work with EPO (the drug of choice in the Tour de France) it can be used to catch cheaters. The audience raised some thought-provoking questions as well. For instance in sports that have great and inherent risks (watch a downhill skier crash for instance) what does it matter that performance enhancement causes a greater risk ? If we let athletes and teams spend a lot of money on hi-tech equipment why not on high tech drugs ? Caitlan was asked if she would report a cheater (yes) and had she been approached to try performance enhancement drugs (no).
Why do professional athletes get a mostly free ride when it comes to drug use and yet amateurs are monitored, followed, and tested day in and day out? I was in Korea for the Olympics in 1988 and celebrated with the other Canadians when Ben Johnson won gold. I was also there to cry in my beer with the rest of Canada when it was stripped away from him for using steroids. And here we are 20 years later - the cheaters are better at cheating, the anti-doping rules and test are getting better at catching, but we’re still trying to find the line we want to walk between winning and playing fair. Where would you weigh in ?