Gene doping is a concept that has emerged from gene therapy which involves the injection of DNA into the body of an individual to restore some key and critical functions that the body may not be performing (McPherson, 2016). However, gene doping involves the injection of genes on the body of an athlete to enhance their performance in various sports. Gene therapy is used in sports to give the users a competitive advantage over the others during competition. To avoid such doping issues in the world’s athletics and games, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was formed (Dimeo & Møller, 2018) to investigate and take disciplinary action on the persons found using the drug. The main function of WADA is to monitor the fight against doping by athletes so that every athlete is given an equal opportunity during the competition. According to WADAs definition, doping is any use of genes, cells, gene elements, and gene modification, nontherapeutic to improve the performance of an individual in sports.
However, one needs to ask themselves whether gene doping is right and ethical to be practiced in sports. Doping threatens the integrity of the sports, there are others with a different school of thought on the same issue (Dimeo & Møller, 2018). Experts have come to an agreement that gene doping can be very dangerous, in fact fatal. For example, using erythropoietin (EPO) should only be done as a hormone and not as gene therapy while in sports such is used to enhance the production of red blood cells. The red blood cell’s excessive production eventually helps in the optimization of the delivery of oxygen to other muscles. It is this that adds extra energy to athletes, distributing it to various body parts to ensure that every part required to function is doing so for effective and improved performance (Dimeo & Møller, 2018) while overworking their bodies as well. An overworked body will only entertain it for some time and beyond some limits, the user can no longer benefit from the initially intended purpose.