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DNA, personal injury in sporting work accidents and protecting the rights of athletes
There are few occupational spheres where you are likely to sustain a career-ending personal injury as professional sport. Unfortunately, even in the world of non-contact sports, having your career ended by an on-field work accident always remains a possibility.
Every year, there are notable examples of world-class athletes being forced to bring a premature close to illustrious careers. Just last year, for example, Norway's Champions League-winning Manchester United forward Ole Gunnar Solksjaer had to hang up his boots on account of persistent knee trouble.
Never more so than in the 21st century are professional sporting teams and organisations commercial entities. This means that they continue to take unprecedented measures to ensure the viability of both themselves and the careers of the sportspeople they employ.
An attempt at an unusual football club signing
It has only recently emerged that a top Premier League club have been in contact with Aberdeen University's Dr Henning Wackerhage, a leading expert in the field of sporting-related genetic research. His notable achievements include experiments producing athletically enhanced rats and mice.
Although it is not known whether any of these specimens managed to match Christiano Ronaldo's goal scoring exploits across a 38-match season, his prediction that genetics would soon be able to produce the human equivalent of a Formula 1 car did alert one unnamed Premier League club into asking Dr Hackerwage if he would lend them his expertise.
However, the doctor turned the opportunity down, saying, "A football club was interested in doing genetic testing of athletes. It was a genetic performance test. My advice was that there are questions of legality with an employer doing genetic tests on its employees. They wanted to conduct a test that is specific to genetics."
His stance is supported by statements from the World Anti-Doping Agency, who in 2005 offered the following guidance, "The use of genetic information to select for or discriminate against athletes should be strongly discouraged."
There may be a future
Yet it is conceivable that similar genetic testing does have a realistic future in sport. For one, it may show an athlete's genetic tendency to certain kinds of personal injury. And while it is true that such information could disadvantage the career prospects of some aspiring athletes, it may also serve to work to their benefit by helping them better protect themselves from injury problems.
It is a conundrum sports' governing body's, including the International Olympic Committee, the Association of Tennis Professionals, UEFA, FIFA, the FA, the ATP and the WTA will all soon have to face.
Because if genetic testing turns out to be in the interests of the health and safety of athletes themselves, helping prevent sporting work accidents, personal injury and compensation claims for curtailed careers and lost earnings, it might just turn out to have a place in professional sport after all.
