Mighty mouse
We might have to build a better mousetrap…researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute have made Marathon Mice capable of running twice as long as normal mice before being exhausted. They modified just a single gene to produce a human protein, PPAR-delta, which additionally makes the mice resistant to weight gain even on a high fat diet!
A company has already produced an oral drug capable of producing the same protein in humans. From the Wired article, “If genetic modification is perfected in humans, this could lead to an easy way to enhance sports performance.” Some interesting questions arise as to what would happen if this procedure was banned, but you produced the protein ‘naturally’ - would you have to prove it? Do athletes need to have full genetic screenings? Deep questions, particularly in light of all the recent Olympic drug testing.
The whole drugs in sport problem seems like a complete mess, for exactly the reasons you describe: a lot of the athletes are going to naturally have some of the advantages that other athletes can only gain by using drugs of various kinds. In tht circumstane it is very unclear what is fair or reasonable.
Indeed, even the denotation “drug” is a rather loose one. I’m sure there are plenty of foods one can eat with variou performance-enhancing effects.