With all the attention of the TV audiences across the globe being captured by the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, I decided to do a story on sports medicine.

The science of sports medicine has evolved a lot in the past few years.  One example that comes readily to mind is "Tommy John" surgery, named after the famous pitcher who once played for the New York Yankees (among other baseball teams) and was the first hurler to ever undergo this procedure some 30 years ago.  The surgery, which is career saving for many pitchers, has been perfected a lot over the past decade, with the success rate going up from 60 to 85 percent for major league players.  While the procedure has gone through some enhancements, it is still pretty much the same as it was for Tommy: a tendon is removed from the patient's wrist or hamstring and grafted into the elbow.  But it is the post-operative rehabilitation that has been really perfected over the past few years, increasing the success rate of the surgery.

Unfortunately, just as it can be used for good purposes as above, sports medicine can also be used sometimes to achieve a victory at any cost.  I am talking about the research that goes on in the dubious science of performance enhancing drugs, which always seems to get more attention during the Olympic games, particularly with such notable disqualifications as Canadian runner Ben Johnson in Seoul (1988).  In other cases, controversy sets in, such as with Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan, who lost her gold medal at the last Olympic Games in Australia because she took an over-the-counter cold medicine.

The Economist magazine had an interesting article on the subject on its August 5th issue.  Some athletes are benefiting from taking EPO (Erythropoietin), a drug which has generated billions of dollars in sales for inventors Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) and licensee Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ).  Basically, the protein promotes the production of red blood cells that enable the blood to carry more oxygen, being prescribed to anemic patients undergoing chemotherapy or suffering from kidney failure.  But for an athlete, EPO definitely improves endurance, since the blood can carry more oxygen to the muscles.  For years, the detection of the protein with standard blood and urine tests has been quite a challenge.  By the time the IOC anti-doping officials perfected EPO testing, science threw them another curveball, since these newer tests cannot detect Aranesp, Amgen's newer, longer-lasting version of the protein.  The article also warns about gene therapy, which involves planting new genes in a person's cells in order to produce missing proteins.  Again, this is a technique being perfected for the noblest intetions, however it can be used both to save lives and to enhance athletic performance.  While Aranesp could be eventually detected, gene doping is almost 100% certainly undetectable, and might make the whole issue of testing a futile exercise.

Finally, there are a lot more complicated ethical questions that might not easy answers.  EPO and gene thereapy as described above clearly violate the olympic spirit of fair competition.  But what about athletes that undergo special treatments to heal faster from injuries?  Soccer idol David Beckham, a star for England and his Spanish club (Real Madrid), used an altitude chamber to accelerate the healing of a broken bone before the 2002 World Cup.  This was well known and documented even before the start of the competition.  How should FIFA or the IOC deal with those type of border line cases?  There may not be a right or wrong answer here...