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The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is an independent foundation created through a collective initiative led by the International Olympic Committee. It was set up on November 10, 1999 in Lausanne, Switzerland to coordinate the fight against drugs in sport. Its current chairman is Dick Pound, a former IOC vice-president and outspoken opponent of drugs in sport. In 2001 WADA voted to move its headquarters to Montreal, Canada.
The agency works to help individual sporting federations implement testing procedures in the fields of education and research. It also produces a list of prohibited substances [1] (http://www.wada-ama.org/docs/web/standards_harmonization/code/list_standard_2004.pdf) that athletes must not take.
Initially funded by the International Olympic Committee it now receives only half of its budgetary requirements from them, with the other half coming from various governments throughout the world.
In 2004, the World Anti-Doping Code was implemented by sports organizations prior to the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, standardizing the rules and regulations governing anti-doping across all sports and all countries for the first time.
In recent years, there has been growing concern that advances in gene therapy could lead to abuse in the form of gene doping. This new form of doping would, in theory, be very difficult to detect and potentially last for many years. The World Anti-Doping Agency has already asked scientists to help find ways to prevent gene therapy from becoming the newest means of doping.
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