Informative USA Today piece on genetic doping:

The World Anti-Doping Agency will meet... to create a battle plan for detecting and deterring perhaps the most nefarious doping method yet developed: genetic alteration of an athlete's body.

Although experts say the prospects of a genetically manipulated athlete participating in the 2004 Athens Olympics is highly improbable, scientists who advise WADA say it is only a matter of a few years before the high-tech procedures — and their incredible promise of massive improvements of athletic performance — enter the world's sports arenas through a growing international black market.

"No one should worry about (genetically altered) athletes today," says Lee Sweeney, professor of physiology and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a pioneer in the use of the IGF-1 gene (insulin-like growth factor I) to rebuild diseased muscle tissue. "But if you're WADA, you've got to anticipate so you won't be blindsided when that day comes."

...Add to that grim scenario the prospect that the former Soviet Union's once-powerful scientific apparatus may be the breeding ground for 21st-century illicit gene transformations.

"That's a fair fear, a real fear," says Sweeney, who gets dozens of calls every week from athletes eager to volunteer for IGF-1 human trials after hearing of his success in building huge muscles in lab mice. For safety reasons, those trials are at least five years away, but that knowledge hasn't deterred those eager for transformation now.