CHICAGO, (Reuters) – Gene therapy offers Olympic  athletes a tempting new way to go for the gold, but the  technology is far too risky a way to cheat, a top gene therapy  expert said yesterday.

Gene doping — in which DNA is introduced into the body  through an inactivated virus or by other means — can alter a  person’s genetic make up and improve athletic performance by  building muscle and increasing blood flow.

“We know we can introduce genes now to correct disease.  It’s not a great leap to say we can also change genes related  to normal human performance, like those required for athletic  performance,” said Dr. Ted Friedmann, director of the Center  for Molecular Genetics at the University of California’s San  Diego’s School of Medicine.

But the risks could be dear, he said, noting that some  patients have died in gene therapy studies.

“It’s almost guaranteed to be dangerous with the current  technology. It would be very foolish for any athlete to allow  it to be done to him or herself,” said Friedmann, a scientific  adviser to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) who wrote a  commentary in the journal Science.

“In the case of participating trainers or doctors, it would  constitute professional or medical malpractice, at least in my  view,” Friedmann said in a telephone interview.

Friedmann and colleagues wrote the commentary just ahead of  the 2010 Winter Olympics next week as a warning to athletes and  the sporting world not to take gene doping lightly.

“We know the world of sport and disreputable trainers and  athletes don’t necessarily wait for a technology to be ripe and  safe to use it,” Friedmann said.

“We’re trying to say the methodology in gene therapy is  powerful but highly experimental and requires application  really in dire disease, and not in a whimsical enhancement for  the purpose of sport,” he told Reuters.

Friedmann said WADA is working on ways to test for gene  doping.

“The tests are obviously different from the tests for the  more traditional drug-based doping,” he said, involving  powerful gene characterization methods.

“One doesn’t have to know what drug was used. One can  identify the effects that drug has had through the use of  genetic tools,” Friedmann said.