Id like your thoughts

[viper]

http://therandomandthefit.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/the-doping-crystal-ball-sporting.html I have written an article prompted by a conversation I had the other day. What do you think the future holds.

[Miqi]

An interesting and well written article. I didn't know much about this so thank you for raising it. I imagine this will be difficult to police - I'm afraid DNA does not remain in stasis throughout our lives; we now know that it can be altered by environmental factors* (Lamarck has his day after all), particularly stress (stress induced gene changes can make us more prone to cancer, for example). As hard training, and elite competition are forms of stress, it will be hard to separate this from cheating.

*I have a pet theory that this may relate to standing/zhan zhuang in a way not yet fully explored by medical science as yet.

[viper]

I agree about the DNA change. That is why I make the case of taking samples even from a low level of competition. I see a benefit from taking longitudinal samples for more then just cheating, imagine what other data we could extract about humans in general from that kind of testing.