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Let the Games Be Doped
Hugh Pickens writes "John Tierney poses the question in the New York Times 'what if we let athletes do whatever they wanted to excel?' Before you dismiss the notion, consider what we're stuck with today — a system designed to create a level playing field, protect athletes' health and set an example for children, that fails on all counts. The journal Nature, in an editorial in the current issue, complains that 'antidoping authorities have fostered a sporting culture of suspicion, secrecy and fear' by relying on unscientifically calibrated tests, like the unreliable test for synthetic testosterone that cost Floyd Landis his 2006 Tour de France victory and even if the authorities manage to correct their tests, they can't possibly keep up with the accelerating advances in biology." Read on for more.
Hugh Pickens continues: "Bengt Kayser, the director of a sports medicine institute at the University of Geneva argues in an article that has been supported by more than 30 scholars in the British Medical Journal that legalizing doping would "encourage more sensible, informed use of drugs in amateur sport, leading to an overall decline in the rate of health problems associated with doping (pdf). In the competition between increasingly sophisticated doping — e.g. gene transfer — and antidoping technology, there will never be a clear winner. Consequently, such a futile but expensive strategy is difficult to defend.""
... we could allow mopeds in Tour de Frace :o)
East German Gymnasts?
That is reason enough.
Legalizing doping will only raise the bar to the next level. Now that everyone can be doped, some will be more doped than others. Thus we are back to the original problem, that some people are more doped than others.
If they legalize doping, they will say what? You can take 50mg of this substance. How can they make sure everyone only takes this much? It will require even more policing.
The reason for doping are purely economic ones, people like cyclists on Tour de France get many green pieces of paper with dead presidents on them. Take out the money incentive from sports and you eliminate doping.
Permitting doping in any sport is the road to that sport's ruin. And justifying the proposal on the basis that the current restrictions fail to 'think of the children' is pretty perverse-
Imagine you are the parent of a child who shows some kind of sporting talent early on- Do you encourage him, knowing that weird drug induced side-effects might overshadow his life?.... (...No, you don't)
Nope, not gonna happen, at least where rich countries are involved. Current drug tests may not be perfect, but they act as a massive break on the worst of this corrosive problem.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
It'll just become another freak show competition. WE don't want a bunch of "The hulks" competing with each other to see which company has the better steroids mix.
In fact, by letting (and therefore FORCING) all competitors to get doped, we're just throwing our money at the big pharmas. Is that what a sports competition is about?
Create an Open or Unlimited category where all manner of doping is legal and an Pure category. Let athletes decide which to participate in fans which to watch. My bet is the Pure category dies in 2-3 years from lack of interest. The Ancient Greeks would not have understood our aversion to doing whatever it takes to win.
I think this is all a confusion of symptoms with causes. Sure, the current standoff between doping and dopers has created a somewhat unpleasant situation, but I think it goes deeper than just the doping. The real problem, as far as I'm concerned at least, is that high level competitive sports on nearly every front exist in a culture concerned only with winning--at any cost. Doping, the lack of sportsmanlike conduct, and all the other problems in high level competition--the way I see it these things all stem from such a strong emphasis on winning over simply playing the game for its own sake. I don't think legalizing doping, or finally preventing it completely, either way, will solve the problems we see. We'll just see a new symptom of the deeper ill manifest. What really needs to change is the whole culture of sports.
My two cents anyway.
'antidoping authorities have fostered a sporting culture of suspicion, secrecy and fear'
The sport frauds created this culture, not the antidoping authorities.
Allowing doping would result in numerous deaths, just like we had in the early days of blood doping.
There is an easy answer to the doping problem: force the pharmaceutical companies to add markers to doping chemicals.
...just like the "all amateur" Olympics.
Before:
Bob Mathias was not permitted to complete in a third Olympics in the decathlon because he had made a movie and was paid for it. The IOC determined that the movie makers paid him to make the movie because he was an athlete and therefore was now a "professional athlete".
Today:
You have countless professionals playing in Basketball, Tennis, Cycling, etc.
Before you dismiss the notion, consider what we're stuck with today -- a system designed to create a level playing field, protect athletes' health and set an example for children, that fails on all counts.
Lack of perfection is not failure.
Could it better? Yes. Will it always be an arms race? Yes. Will athletes always try and get an edge? Yes.
Using this logic to justify unlimited PEDs is like saying that since we can't stop criminals from stealing, therefore, we should just give up and let people steal whatever they want. After all, you can't stop a determined thief, so why not just let them have what they want?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I can make informed judgments about how much booze is good for me.
When I was 25, I couldn't (didn't).
When I was 18, I was barely able to understand what booze was.
When I was 16, I had one (1) drink with dinner sometimes with my parents, under their supervision.
"Legalizing Doping" needs to have some good controls to make sure kids and people who may really regret it later (young adults) don't get into bad situations, because face it that shit can kill you or leave you with severe complications. Unless you just want to make all that shit legal, even for 8 year old gymnasts... you end right back to "hiding doping because they can't detect it". You would get coaches and parents stretching the age limits, and now you can't just find the stuff, you have to prove the particular aged kid got it...
If "level playing field" is your argument, it fails for the same reason "no doping" fails.
So if you allow athletes to use whatever drugs they can find to make them perform well NOW, regardless of any future health problems, how many will accept early death in exchange for short-term glory? I'm guessing quite a lot of them. Young people, which most athletes are, aren't the best at thinking long term. How different is this different than the old Roman gladiators? Ok, they were slaves. Should we allow fights to the death as sport so long as the contestants aren't forced into it? Will most people be able to enjoy sports if watching them reminds them of a terrible price the athletes are paying in health and longevity? The drug tests may not catch all drugs well, but I would guess that in general the more impact a drug makes on performance, the easier it is to catch. Also the drugs with the most dangerous side effects are probably easier to catch too simply because of those side effects. So the drug testing can't prevent all cheating, but it does help limit the damage done by them.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
The appeal of sporting events like the Olympics is the idea of the dedication of regular people pushing themselves to extreme personal discipline. I respect athletes who get up at 5:30 am every morning to run or swim for 4 hours.
I don't respect someone who's doped themselves up to take a short cut; anymore that I do someone who pays off a ref. No one with impeccable discipline should be forced to compete with a cheater willing to destroy his body or mind.
BTW, this is what the recent Congressional hearings on steroids use were trying to warn us about. We now have kids in middle school pumping themselves up with steroids in order to secure positions on high school teams. The testimony from stars like Clemens was supposed to be bait to get people to pay attention, but the media couldn't see past the glittering lights of pro athletes to the testimony from the medical community.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
First, I read all three articles. Once you overcome that heart attack, allow me to rebuff this nonsense.
the NYT article and the summary say:
Before you dismiss this notion, consider what we're stuck with today. The system is ostensibly designed to create a level playing field, protect athletes' health and set an example for children, but it fails on all counts.
Exactly how does it fail on all accounts? Where is the proof of this allegation in this article? I don't myself see this as a broken system, so this statement is not self evident. If someone has some proof please provide it. To dissect this statement, I don't see athletes dropping dead in sports where steroids are banned, and I know plenty of kids who think Steroids are wrong. I also see that, at least in high schools, steroids are the exception, not the rule. I have however, seen stories of kids and athletes dropping dead from a steroid overdose, or running into emotional, or worse, legal, problems resulting from behavioral changes that current steroids are known to cause. So show me what's broken.
The rest of the article falls on it's face because it's making an assumption I don't see as being there.
The journal Nature, in an editorial in the current issue, complains that "antidoping authorities have fostered a sporting culture of suspicion, secrecy and fear"
If you read the Nature article, it's slant is more a rebuke of the drug testing authorities who are not open about their processes, and athletes who are having problems disputing drug tests. I agree with that, if you are accused of doping you have a moral right to contest that. But to me that doesn't give any weight to a pro doping stance.
If doping was allowed, would there be an increase in the rate of death and chronic illness among athletes? Would athletes have a shorter lifespan than the general population? Would there be more examples like the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in the former East-German republic? We do not think so. Only a small proportion of the population engages in elite sports. Furthermore, legalisation of doping, we believe, would encourage more sensible, informed use of drugs in amateur sport, leading to an overall decline in the rate of health problems associated with doping. Finally, by allowing medically supervised doping, the drugs used could be assessed for a clearer view of what is dangerous and what is not.
This is from the PDF. More false assumptions. Only a small proportion of the population engages in elite sports because only a few are gifted to play that sport. The point is that with doping, more may attempt to be just that gifted, and then you have an explosion of talent. Everyone wants to be like Mike, just shoot up and you will be! That will then lead to health problems and side effects that come from doping. Sure you are guaranteed to get muscles and improve your performance, but there's more to life than sports, and if you dope for sports, absolutely everything else suffers.
And it's not the kids and the athletes I really have a problem with when it comes to doping. The number one problem I have with doping are all the people surrounding kids and athletes who will pressure the kids to dope! Coaches with pride on the line (and maybe an increased paycheck), principals and superintendents trying to increase notoriety of their school district. Deans trying to increase enrollments. Endorsers promising big contracts for more touchdowns this season. The money chain will explode! All at the expense of he health of one kid who just wants to be badass and land a big contract. Other people get fat and rich at his expense. I absolutely abhor that possibility.
There are things in health science that are working to improve performance of athletes without doping. It's my understanding that doping not only gives you an unfair competitive edge, but also leads to health problems down the road. If that's not true, someone please dispute what I'm saying. But that's the basis for the ban country wide of Steroids. The last thing we need are mega corporations shoving athletic performance enhancing drugs down our gullets, because if you think prescription drugs are bad now..............
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Anyone have a link that works outside the USA, or a description of what the parent is talking about?
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My dad is an athlete and has to use a steroid to combat his psoriasis. Your argument is a fat steaming lump of FAIL.
On top of that he has to use a barbiturate for medical purposes (epilepsy).
I suppose as far as you're concerned his achievements are bullshit.
This leads to a "tragedy of the commons", though, where athletes can no longer compete on their own merits without using (potentially harmful) performance enhancing drugs because everyone else is using them. I don't think we want to go down that road.
Weekend Update: All Drug Olympics
I'm guessing that won't make it onto NBC's primetime Olympic broadcast.
Look, when an athlete dies these days due to an overdose on whatever steroid or performance enhancing drug he's secretly taking, it's his fault, sure, you could argue that the culture of sports and the culture of having to be better than the next guy drove him to it, but in the end it's illegal and against the rules and he shouldn't have done it. If you legalize doping, then it's no longer his fault. It's allowed in the rules and it's encouraged and if that's the case then doping wouldn't be a personal choice for the athlete, it would be a requirement to be able to keep up with all the other althetes in his field. So when an athlete dies doping in a dope-okay world, then he is a cruel victim of the system and the system is to be blamed. That's why you can't legalize doping. Make it legal, then people will be FORCED to do it, and then people will die because y'all thought it was too inconvienient to try to make better tests.
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
You're naively assuming that it's up to the athletes at all. Given what goes on with doping being illegal, it would be a field day for sport club owners and countries; anyone who would benefit greatly without taking any of the risk. For them, to hell with the health concerns of the athlete, as long as they bring back sacks of gold. (and silver and bronze, but mostly gold).
If you don't set clear limits on technology in sports, the competition is no longer one of athletics, but of engineering. The skill and effort of the participant becomes less important than the biochemists and engineers who have "rebuilt him".
While such a competition among bioengineers would be quite interesting to see, it would be highly unethical to use humans like this, as building materials in a glorified Pinewood Derby contest.
In all sports that can be called sports, the emphasis is on the effort of the participant, not the technology. Even technological sports like auto racing set up strict limits to the kinds of technology that can be used. Otherwise, NASCAR racing, for example, would just be a contest to see who can stick the biggest engine on four wheels.
Sports already has plenty of controversy with possibly-unbalanced technological advantantages: consider the Speedo LZR racing swimsuit, Oscar Pistorius, and so on. Allow biotech into the mix, and it's a nightmare. And we lose focus on what's important: the athlete.
Honestly, I can understand how people who care about competitive sports and participate in them would be annoyed because they have to guess they keep losing just because the other guy is using a less tracable kind of doping or just because they're worse at whatever sport they play, even if I don't really see why you'd want to risk your life for it, but as someone above you already suggested in a roundabout way, it may be the only thing someone is capable of doing.
But it seems to me that the current culture (specifically in marathony/cycling long distances) is pretty much destroyed already by the mentioned suspicion, as pretty much nobody will want to risk being the only guy who isn't cheating, and consistently losing because of it.
For them, legalizing doping would just create more openness/honesty
As long as we're banning performance enhancing drugs, we should also be banning performance enhancing technologies. No ultra-low-resistance suits for swimmers, no special shoes for basketball players, no compound bows for archers, no ultra-light bikes for cyclists ...
Why not have a Drugged/Whatever-it-takes Olympics? Separate from the Summer Olympics proper. We have separate olympic events for paraplegics, quadraplegics etc. Why not have a separate Games where athletes are able to do whatever it takes to be the best.
If they want to remove their legs just below the knees so they can supplant them with carbon fibre fins, they can.
If they want to get juiced up on steroids 'til they're a quivering mass of muscle, they can.
If they want to have implants in their feet that act as flippers, they can.
That way, the purists can keep the Olympics free of "cheats" and the rest of the world can see what humans are truly capable of, when mankind chooses something different, chooses the impossible. When athletes are not bound by petty morality. When the great are not constrained by the small...
But then the "natural" athletes will bitch and whine about how no one wants to watch or sponsor their league. The doping league will be so much faster, stronger, and injury prone that they will get all the TV ratings. The world doesn't want to watch the second best games. Look at it like this: How many people watch the Para-Olympics on TV? The stories and athletes are just as inspiring or more so, but they aren't quiet as good as the regular Olympics so they get no love.
We are all just people.
Their healthy lives depends on them not doing that much sports, too. Gymnasts beginning from infancy so that they're pros at 14, before their childish elasticity ends, have totally broken bodies by the time they're 20.
Let them destroy their bodies in whatever way they want to. They're *all* doped anyway.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
For which athletes? I'm pretty sure the Greeks used to train and prepare for their games.
quote: The athletes ... had to prove that they had been in training for ten months before the Games. They also had to spend 30 days training at Olympia before the Games began under the supervision of judges who made the choice of the athletes who would compete in the Games.
http://www.library.uq.edu.au/olympics/milns.html
Anyway, you are still going to have to draw a line somewhere: doping, cybernetics, gene mods etc. So not allowing doping is a valid practical line. And so is "allowing full body swimsuits but only those with a buoyancy between X and Y".
Car analogy: it's just like Formula 1 racing, there is really no "formula unlimited", because at the end of the day people have to decide "What is an acceptable car?" and "What is an acceptable way of winning?", so they might as well decide "What is an acceptable F1 car".
After all with future tech, there could be cybernetics, or genetically modified humans, or biomodified humans. And then you also start asking "what's human".
While the rules do restrict, the rules also help provide _shape_ to the event. Are we sure we are ready for a games with mods and doping? It could be a slippery slope to quite a lot of nastiness - even _in_ spectators.
On a vaguely related note - this is why to me, exploration in some areas of science should be discouraged till humans are ready (in terms of tech, medical, culture, society, religion - religion isn't going away any time soon whether you want it or not) for the implications. It's like the "Civ" game, where you do some stuff first, then only other stuff.
For instance say some genius suddenly creates a gene mod that makes us super fit, AND also makes it contagious. I don't think all of us want it automatically - no matter how good it seems.
Your OBVIOUSLY wrong about smoking laws. Smoking does EXACTLY what you mention later - it kills other people.
These laws don't prevent YOU from smoking and killing yourself, they only prevent you from doing so IN (generally enclosed) public places and forcing (unfiltered!) carcinogens on everyone ELSE. Whether you think that's 'fair' or not, smoking in a public place isn't a 'private' matter unless you're so antiscience you don't believe in second hand smoke. You're not normally allowed to walk around spraying other known toxins into the air in great quantities. Most of these laws don't prohibit chew, because it's not about you killing you - it's about keeping you from killing me. And I've heard that modern US cigarettes are actually quite a bit worse than just rolling up a bunch of old natural tobacco was, including things like Polonium.
Everything ELSE you've just said is fine with me, honestly - as long as then you die. Because every single one of the above doesn't just improve statistics, it costs the government, and therefore us, the taxpayer, a bunch of money.
So I think you SHOULD be allowed to not wear a helmet - if you've signed a waiver saying that under no circumstances will my taxes pick up any part of the astronomical bill for your long term brain damaged life - or if you're going to off yourself if that happens. Since we're not presently at peace as a society with just letting you publicly rot in an acute way, the only way this currently works that I can see is if you pick up a sufficiently large long term insurance policy from a sufficiently well rated insurer. If you just die, that's not usually an excessive cost, relatively speaking.
Do you have even the slightest conception what kind of costs are involved in long term care for cancer or a debilitating brain injury? Sure, depending on where you are, on the thinly stretched public dime you might end up in some crazy terrible place with substandard care - but even THAT will be costing the taxpayers a very pretty penny, while being a fraction of the cost to give you top-flight care.
And I'm absolutely not making a point to be fanciful - I think motorcycle companies should sell helmet vs no helmet insurance, and I think if you have an appropriate long-term-care coverage you should be free to ride helmetless. I'm not even sure that would make motorcycle insurance that much MORE expensive. Maybe I'm wrong and the cost difference would be trivial, even.
Lest I come across wrong to the Slashdot masses - I decidedly think helmet laws are your strongest point... because the people who die without them have some balancing effect on the people who live with more debilitating injuries with them. Everything else is much more reliably costly.
And if you don't think obesity increases health costs, and that many of these health costs are in the poor, and that this dramatically increases the unreimbursed expenditures of emergency rooms, you're sorely misguided.
As an amusing note, last time I checked in Alaska you could legally ride without a helmet - but if you have a passenger without a helmet, YOU get a ticket.
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What is why we should discourage exploration in some areas of science? You haven't really offered a reason, just a vaguely articulated fear.
Maybe exploration is the wrong word. I'm more like saying some things should not be done yet, and other stuff given higher priority. Right now stuff seems quite haphazard.
:).
Perhaps one day the equivalent of a "Big Red Kill Everyone Button" will be cheap and fairly available, will everyone have the discipline or desire to not push it?
Already the cost of making custom viruses is getting lower and lower.
Oh well, maybe it's just too late anyway and all we can do is hope for the best
Sport is healthy, we hear, which is true in moderation. Take running as an example: running up to a few miles every day is healthy, it strengthens your body; but running a marathon is never healthy. The reason is simply: exercise causes a lot of minute 'damages' in your tissues, and the body responds by not only repairing the damage, but also improving things in anticipation of future exercise. But a marathon causes more damage than the body can repair, to put it simply.
So, the Olympic games are definitely not about promoting health in the first place - they are about meeting in peaceful competition, and about making money. As far as I can see, the money involved is what makes it such a higly strung and overhyped event that the participants want to win no matter what the price is for their own health. Remove the business aspect and make it exclusively a forum for nations to meet in 'peaceful battle', which is a good way to avoid war; I think the doping problem will be a lot smaller.
As it is now, when an athlete fails a doping test, it is regarded as their personal attempt at cheating; if the games were more of a meeting of nations, doping could be seen as the attempt of that nation to cheat; the whole country would be put to shame, and the athletes would be under much less pressure to cheat.
would think that the Chinese aren't cheating their asses off.
And the Americans and the Russians, Japanese, Australians, French, Italians etcera infinitum.....
I hate the "have a separate Olympics" argument. That's the first reason: if you have a separate "enhanced" Olympics, no one will watch the normals anymore, and it will die out. The second point is: what's going to stop enhanced athletes from entering the regular games, and cheating the system like they do now? It puts you right back at square one.
Scanning through the highly moderated article, I didn't see this point raised, which seems critical. The doctors that would be required to do this research to provide doping and drugs are bound by a ethical code of conduct, and this definitely forbids giving people medications with very serious risks to somebody that is healthy.
Some have expression the opinion of "let them be lab rats." Well, I doubt that any good doctors would touch that ethical quagmire with a ten foot pole. I mean, the notion of informed consent alone is a huge red flag. Can you say that somebody that is willing to risk their health and life to potentially (nothing is certain) perform a bit better is truly of a state of mind to consent? And what doctor would do such a thing. Would you want a doctor that doesn't care about your health, but just want they can get away with?
And the ethics are there for a reason. Bioethics exists for a reason. Part of the Human Genome Project was funding to examine carefully and intensively the impacts of the project, how the data should be used, the impacts on society. In fact, there was discuss if the project should be allowed at all.
Of course, things can improve in testing. What I think needs to happen (and has, in the NFL, for example), is that more athletes need to come out and say that they want to test their limits without risking their health. That at the end of the day, they don't want to dope. That they are not willing to do anything to win. They want to test themselves on their terms, not as some "mad scientist" experimental rat.
And the sport fan needs to learn that the best part of sports is not winning or losing, it is the pursuit of excellence and being tested and retested time and time again.
Unfortunately, the slippery slope is actually a marble. You can slide off in a lot of different ways.
Once you start banning substances, where do you stop. Can we ban steak, because some countries diets are low in protein, and all that fat is unhealthy to the athletes? (yes, it is an extreme example. To the point of being silly....or is it?)
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