In a concept known as Continuous Assisted Performances (CAP), agency researchers are working on ways of getting parts of the brain that become ‘mentally’ (biochemically) fatigued due to sleep deprivation to switch off, while another part of the brain is ‘taught’ to recharge itself or by using neurological drugs (although uppers already do this but with only temporary benefits and with side effects). Once these ‘neural pathways’ are recognised, then redirecting the pathway could be utilised to offset the effects of sleep deprivation and by association, fatigue brought on by extreme physical activity. The plan by DARPA is to create the ‘24/7’ soldier who could operate without loss of physical and mental function for up to a week. The consequences for any endurance sport are obvious and I only remember too well the exhausting nights of study where buckets of coffee were consumed to keep sleep at bay. If only I could have told my brain to ‘stay awake’ without having to spend half the night in the loo from the effects of caffeine, maybe my results would have been better.

Are you still awake? Because the next idea should stir the brain waves. In a project known as the “Metabolically Dominant Soldier’ (MDS), researchers are aiming to increase the metabolic (work) rate of the internal machinery of human cells to promote strength and endurance. The hope is to increase the capacity of someone being able to do, say, about 80 push-ups to more than 300 or be able to walk forever with a 150-pound backpack. The premise of this research is that combat soldiers would have to otherwise spend precious time consuming enough calories to support prolonged physical efforts on the battlefield, so one solution to the problem is to do away with food completely (for up to a week) and let the body live off what it has already stored. By implication, then, athletes who invariably have higher metabolic rates than couch potatoes like us could ‘train’ their bodies to work even harder and further ratchet up the body by using energy sources like glucose drinks. There would not be a need to eat energy bars and the like, which many athletes seem to do these days. With a work ‘threshold’ set higher before any other energy sources are consumed, then an athlete is going to have a distinct advantage. Remember in war it’s about winning, not losing. Modern-day sport is no different.

Ready to have your socks knocked off? In a ‘Beyond 3000’ concept known as Engineered Tissue Constructs (ETC), the idea is to ‘customise’ organs and body parts on demand inside the body, rather than by the crude technique of transplantation. One of the aims of ETC is to allow badly-injured soldiers to enter a state of hibernation or suspended animation (you know the scenes – bodies wired up to life support systems in glass cages etc) until help arrives. In this ‘state’ the soldier could survive long periods without oxygen. This programme is interested in making it possible for soldiers to run Olympic level races for at least 15 minutes with only one breath of air. Apparently there is a lot of oxygen in a single breath but most of it going to waste, though. The marathon would become a sprint race if you only needed to breathe eight to 10 times; the Tour de France would seem like a ride in the park if you believe this one. Hey, man landing on the moon was just as big a nonsense 100 years ago.

And let’s not forget disabled athletes. The implications for them could be even more profound. DARPA has experimentally restored the sight of blinded rats and they are dabbling into the area of limb re-growth; after all, if we can ‘grow’ a whole human in test tubes from a single cell, hell, why can’t a finger, hand, foot or leg be re-grown? Prosthetic limbs which can be integrated biologically, making them fully functional just like the real thing, is also a hope of this research. These prosthesis would be fully controlled by the body’s own fine motor device (the brain and spinal chord), giving the person the ability to feel the limb without looking at it and also actually feel what the limb is touching. The applications for any blind or amputee disabled athlete are potentially enormous and with these sorts of advances there may one day be no such thing as the Para-Olympics.

In the wash-up, though, these technologies are all pretty much concepts of fantasy, but that is what DARPA expects from its researchers. Part of their job description demands that they be able to think ‘out-of-this-world’, perhaps even ‘out-of-this-galaxy’. Their concepts may take five, 10, even 40 years to become reality, but DARPA have no particular timelines for any of their projects. The human race is here for the long haul (I hope, anyway).

In a quirky ‘upside’, these technologies, save for the pain vaccine, would mean that performance enhancement could be mostly done without drugs and would therefore be very safe. Photo-modulation would avoid the need to take steroids to hasten recovery, CAP would do away with the need for stimulants like speed, MDS would make supplements and ‘recovery’ proteins redundant and ETC would mean that athletes had no need to blood boost. And ‘growth enhancers’ like Growth Hormone (which despite all the hype has never been proven to improve performance but that’s another story) would be replaced by gene therapy technology where extra muscle related genes were inserted into an athletes DNA. The Schwarzenegger Mice are living proof that this ‘muscle building therapy’ works.

While some argue that human health and human physical activity should be limited to what nature has given us, others say let's push the boundaries and see what humans are capable of with a ‘little help’. The impact of gene technology and bio-technology will probably see humans being transformed to a state that has become labelled as ‘post-human’ by futurists where we will have become different biological creatures to what we are today. And in a ‘post-human’ society, would existing rules apply particularly in sport? Would the anti-doping rules of today have any meaning or even any effect in this futuristic scenario? Indeed, will anyone care?

As the likelihood of transformation in the human species gathers pace, it is probably not too ridiculous an idea that one day the World Anti Doping Agency will also be transformed to become the World Advanced Doping Agency because in a 100 years (or more, or even less) society may look back and say what was all the fuss about over doping in sport. In the distant future, it is arguable that performance enhancement will have far greater moral currency than performance prohibition.

Although the ‘horse has bolted’ with regards to the ethics and morality of doping today, it is not too late to begin an ethical debate on these impending even real bio-technologies. In this context maybe an ‘out-of-this-world’ discussion on the merits or otherwise of a Pro-Doping Agency should be seriously entertained. If all humans are to have access to enhancement in the future, then why or how could an athlete be excluded from such benefits just because they were playing sport? Who will make this moral and ethical judgement?

If sport is all about entertainment (and celebrities) in the future, because that’s what it already is today, why should we care if athletes have doped when society at large has been, by definition, also doped utilising enhancing bio-technologies.

We need to talk now.

Robin Parisotto is a former Australian Institute of Sport researcher and author of Blood Sports – the inside dope on drugs in sport.