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Illegal gene therapy offered in Chinese hospital
By Craig Lord

Startling new evidence of a burgeoning underground doping culture in China emerged last night as a hospital doctor said that he was prepared to give illegal performance-enhancing gene therapy treatment to an Olympic swimmer. The doctor was caught on camera by a German television investigator saying that he wanted £12,000 for a two-week treatment that would help to strengthen the lungs of a fictitious American swimmer.

The documentary, broadcast by ARD on Germany’s main channel last night, went on to show evidence that drugs firms in China are prepared to sell steroids that have not passed full clinical trials, as well as erythropoietin (EPO), the blood-boosting drug, at a price far cheaper than in the West. In the case of one steroid, 100g was sold for €150 (about £120) when the price in Europe would have been more than €6,000.

The film, Flying High in Middle Kingdom, produced with the help of evidence from The Times, also disclosed that Xu Huigin, a female swimming coach who has served two doping suspensions after her athletes tested positive for steroids, is a serving member of the China team’s staff. It is an appointment that appears to fly in the face of Chinese state policy to ban doping cheats for life.

With the Olympics beginning in Beijing in a little more than two weeks, the documentary evidence of cheap, on-demand gene therapy alarmed David Howman, the director general of the World AntiDoping Agency (Wada). “This is worse than my worst fears,” he said.

When the head of a hospital gene therapy department in China was approached by a fictitious American swimming coach seeking stem-cell treatment for one of his swimmers, the doctor replied: “Yes. We have no experience with sportspeople here, but the treatment is safe and we can help you.”

Asked how it would work, the doctor said: “It strengthens lung function and stem cells go into the bloodstream and reach the organs. It takes two weeks. I recommend four intravenous injections . . . 40 million stem cells or double that, the more the better. We also use human growth hormones, but you have to be careful because they are on the doping list.”

And the price? “Twenty-four thousand dollars,” the doctor said.

Howman admitted to finding the material in the documentary “very distressing”. “It is very scary that health professionals should have such a lack of ethics and try what we know to be experimental on human beings for a vast amount of money,” he said. “What they are proposing to do is a total breach of the prohibited list of the standards we have implied to make sure that cheating through the use of gene doping or gene therapy is prohibited.”

When investigators approached three companies for the supply of steroids and EPO, they were asked to pick up the substances personally, to get round the preGames crackdown on selling illegal substances on the black market. EPO and a steroid called estra-diendione were offered. One hundred grams of the steroid cost 1,500 yuan (about £100). It came with quality control certification and proved to be a bargain. The cost in Europe is upwards of £4,500 per 100g, according to Mario Thevis, an expert at a laboratory in Cologne.

To add to China’s embarrassment, Huang Xiaomin, a silver medal-winner as an 18-year-old in the 200 metres breaststroke at the 1988 Games in Seoul, tells the documentary that members of the national team of which she was a part were fed steroids in their early teens. Now a coach in South Korea, she said: “We were administered the substances at regular intervals. It always happened in a room at our dormitory. My voice sounded more and more manly and my Adam’s apple was extremely big. Male characteristics came through stronger and stronger as time went by. I had lots of health problems later on. It [doping] totally transformed me. It was as if I was ill. I had no will to live.”

No cure on offer for Beijing’s embarrassment

Gene therapy: stem-cell treatment

Gene therapy is a relatively recent and highly experimental approach to treating human disease. It uses a patient’s cells to produce and deliver a therapeutic agent to cure the body or enhance its performance. Athletes could potentially abuse gene therapy research by seeking treatments designed, for example, to enhance blood flow or alter the function of mitochondria (the engine of cells that can dictate speed and endurance of movement in individuals).

China’s hall of shame

1994 Eleven Chinese athletes, including seven swimmers, test positive for steroids after arriving in Hiroshima for the Asian Games.
1998 Yuan Yuan, a Chinese swimmer, is arrested at Sydney airport after customs officials seize 13 vials of human growth hormone from her kitbag as she travels to the World Championships in Perth.
2000 Several young distance runners and two top swimmers are among more than 20 athletes dropped by China on the eve of the Olympic Games in Sydney.