Axel May / Photo credit: MUSTAFA YALCIN / ANADOLU AGENCY / Anadolu Agency via AFP
The sports authorities held their annual conference in Paris on Friday “for a doping-free sport”. This 22nd national symposium was placed “under the seal of general mobilization” less than 500 days before the opening of the Paris Olympic Games. Europe 1 takes the opportunity to take stock of genetic doping.
This is no longer science fiction. Gene doping is becoming a reality, taken very seriously by the French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD). A sports cheat that details the secretary general of the agency, Jérémy Roubin, met by Europe 1 during the colloquium “for a sport without doping” organized in Paris this Friday.
“The idea is very simple: rather than administering, for example, EPO or growth hormone to improve performance, we will modify the gene that produces EPO or growth hormone. , so that this production takes place in quotes in a natural way. But it will be artificial since it will have been stimulated”, he explains. In short, increase its production of EPO neither seen nor known.
The anti-doping community mobilizes
The secretary general of the AFLD continues: “It is perfectly undetectable, since the EPO that your body produces is endogenous, the one that we all produce. So traditional analyzes do not allow it to be detected”.
The bill on the Olympic and Paralympic Games, adopted this week by Parliament, will also authorize the French Anti-Doping Laboratory to develop genetic research techniques. At the Tokyo Games and the Beijing Winter Olympics, genetic analyzes were carried out for the first time. But to date in the world, no case of this “future” doping has been detected.