ResearchSafe

Vanity Fair piece on the Enhanced Games, performance doping out in the open

Posted by tiredmira in Research & News - 1 points, 2 comments.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/inside-the-enhanced-games

The Vanity Fair feature on the Enhanced Games is worth a read, basically a deep dive into athletes competing openly on steroids, growth hormone, and Adderall, with gene therapies starting to creep in.

The thing that stood out to me is how normalized this is starting to feel. It is framed like a parallel olympics, but the athletes are openly running protocols that would get anyone else banned for life. The article also points out the money behind it, tech bros funding the whole thing, which makes it less surprising.

It is an interesting case study for the peptide world too. If gene therapy becomes the next doping frontier, regulators are basically already behind. Anyone else following it, and do you think this pushes doping rules further underground or just speeds up the conversation about rewriting the rules?

Comments

  • elle_z: Honestly this whole thing makes me a bit uneasy, like the whole "transparency" framing feels convenient when you're also the one making money off the protocols. But the gene therapy angle is what caught my attention too, because once you're editing genes you can't exactly pee test your way out of that conversation 😅 The peptide parallel is real though, most of what gets discussed in biohacking circles would probably get a regular athlete banned instantly, and the line between "research" and "p
  • skeptical_nomad: Yeah the transparency angle is sus, like it's only transparency when it benefits them. (and once you're sponsored by a supplement company, of course you're gonna say the system is broken) the gene therapy stuff is wild tho, no test, no reversal, just permanent edits. Peptide world is honestly a softer version of the same problem imo, gray markets exist because the rules don't match what people actually want to do.

Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.