Doping rules are sometimes hard to understand. Sleeping in a low pressure chamber and training at high altitudes is allowed but taking epo is not – although net effects may be the same.
This might be a reason why some athletes are now trying to mimick more closely biology. Repoxygen is a viral vector known for some time that includes the human epo gene under control of a hypoxia control element. Clearly this drug has the potential to be used for doping (“Outlaw DNA“).
Any abuse may be immediately detected if the delivered gene sequence is not 100% identical to the human sequence (for example by resequencing the introns or looking for other remains of the viral vector9. I warn you, however, to do any experiments as infected blood cells removed from the body for a doping test will show hypoxia stress and let them produce additional epo … More seriously, read the Gelsinger story.
Today is the day of free advice and here is my free advice: 1. An A sample is an A sample 2. Believe in what people say but not in lab results 3. They would not call it an A sample if there would not be a B sample 4. Doping is only proven with A + B sample 5. Even then may be open questions 6. do not accuse anybody without knowing the details and 7. doping is inacceptable, yea, yea.