World Anti-Doping Agency Looks to Combat Doping Crisis Using “Biological Passports”

Professional sports currently has a doping crisis, with studies suggesting that approximately one-third of athletes take banned substances when training for international competitions. However, only 1-2 percent of athletes will fail a drug test annually. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) hopes to use the competitors’ genetic codes to better monitor the presence of banned substances in sports.

Under WADA’s proposed plan, Olympic athletes would be forced to submit copies of their genetic codes before competition, which would create a biological passport for each competitor. Rather than attempting to detect a banned substance or method, WADA would monitor the biological passport for physiological changes that could indicate doping.

Once a genetic baseline is established, WADA can observe alterations in an athlete’s blood, hormones, and body chemistry. The biological passport’s eight-year statute of limitations means that the agency could retest older samples as new drug tests are developed.

Current testing methods cannot keep up with the substances and strategies athletes use to cheat. “Doping appears remarkably widespread among elite athletes, and remains largely unchecked despite current biological testing,” according to the authors of a 2017 WADA study.

In the past, genetic testing was too expensive for WADA to consider. With the recent drop in costs to only a few hundred dollars, the agency could start using the biological passport within the next couple of years.

The biological passport has already been used to catch athletes with trace amounts of drugs in their systems. However, WADA needs a genetic baseline for doping instances that alter a competitor’s biology.

WADA scientists are now trying to determine if the biological passport should include the entirety of an athlete’s genetic code or only the segments related to sports performance. This question raises several problems, one being that genes often work with each other in ways that scientists do not yet understand.

The biological passport also presents ethical considerations involving the athlete’s privacy. WADA will need to determine who has access to the competitor’s genetic sequence once it is submitted.

In anticipation for new biological forms of cheating, WADA has banned different methods, such as gene doping, which is the manipulation of the genetic code to help the athlete perform better. Last year, WADA also banned the use of substances that edit genome sequences.

WADA refines the biological passport constantly to reflect new updates in doping methods and substances. Not only are WADA scientists able to monitor an athlete’s recorded genetics, they can also predict how the athlete’s code should develop without the use of doping or the manipulation of genes.

Officials at WADA believe that the use of a biological passport will discourage athletes from doping. Because competitors are tested tens of times per year, the passport will make monitoring, and ultimately catching, potential cheaters much easier.