Olympic Drug Cops Will Scan for Genetically Modified Athletes

July 28, 2016

(Wired) – In fact, drug regulators are usually playing catch up to drug users. But next month at the Rio Olympics, officials will roll out a test for a doping method that athletes might not even be using yet—genetic manipulation of the body’s own cellular machinery, or gene doping. “We feel there’s a great risk this novel technology will be used,” says Carl Johan Sundberg, an exercise physiologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who reviewed the new test for the World Anti-Doping Agency. “So we are being proactive for the first time.”