ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the prospects for genetic enhancement and its impact on sports. The history of “sex verification” goes back at least to the 1930s when the International Olympic Committee began questioning the sexual identity of athletes. Accordingly, the challenge of genetic and other techniques of biomedical enhancement for sports comes not from practices aimed at athletes only, but from the quite general goal of enhancing the human species. In sports, there is plenty of evidence that erythropoietin, human growth hormone, and many other drugs, including anabolic steroids, do effectively enhance athletic training and performance. Athletes’ accomplishments would no longer be due to arduous training and flinty determination, but the artificial enhancements of biomedicine. Seeking mastery in their sports is a central trait of athletic accomplishment. Variations in maximal oxygen uptake, types of muscle fibers, hematocrit levels, height, visual acuity, and coordination vary widely and can be identified as positional advantages for athletic competition.
