Online debate about allowing Performance Enhancing Drugs in sport

Readers may be interested in the online debate from Oxford University regarding the question of allowing performance enhancing drugs in sport. Professor Julian Savulescu uses the example of the Tour de France to support his proposal for allowing the use of (some) doping methods whereas Dr John William Devine rejects this on the grounds of undermining the integrity and value of sport. It is proving to be an excellent example of philosophical argument in action and on a subject that fires the interest and opinion of many of us in the general population.

You can view the whole debate here and are also able to join the debate and provide comments of your own.

Oxford Online Debates: Drugs in sport

As reported on Oxford's Practical Ethics:

Drugs in Sport debate and special edition

Over the next month Oxford Online Debates will be tackling the motion "Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sport". We will try to collect together relevant materials and blog posts below in this special edition.

Continue reading "Drugs in Sport debate and special edition" »

Moderated by Roger Crisp, who in his opening statement writes, "Taking drugs to improve one’s sporting performance seems, on the face of it, a paradigmatic example of a wrong action. It combines two activities usually considered shameful: the use of banned substances, and cheating."

"But on closer inspection the issue is more complicated," Crisp continues. "The use of some drugs, such as nicotine or caffeine (both of which might enhance performance in some cases), carries little or no stigma, and the charge of cheating would be inappropriate were the drugs in question explicitly permitted."

Should be an interesting discussion.

Bradley Wiggins Blood Profiles

Over the past year or two, I've become much more interested in the sport of cycling. And I've become a fan of the Garmin-Slipstream team, for several reasons. One of those reasons is their explicit, public, and verifiable commitment to "clean cycling." Of course, it's no secret that one of the big revelations of the Tour de France was the emergence of Bradley Wiggins as a serious stage racer demonstrated by his overall 4th place finish. In light of the anti-doping stance taken by Wiggins and his team, his blood profiles have been made public. I wonder if this is the path other sports will have to take to retain their fans, at least the ones who care about whether or not their favorite athletes and teams are using performance-enhancing substances. This does raise issues related to the privacy of athletes, and of course there is the problem of techniques that can evade detection, but I wonder if the integrity of sport will require this sort of thing, as long as the bans against doping are in place?

Bigger, Stronger, Faster*

I've only seen the trailer below, and read a bit about this film, but I think it would be of interest to readers of this blog.

Doping and the Double Standard in Professional Sport

People are generally opposed to the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport, and this negative reaction has a number of arguments at its root. For example, critics claim that these drugs affect the purity of the sport, or that they could possibly have unforeseen and negative side-effects on athletes. By far the most prominent claim against performance enhancers is that they give an illegal and undeserved edge to those who use them. I take issue with this view, not necessarily because it is incorrect, but because it masks what I see as a blatant double standard in professional sport. The full version of this argument appears in the latest edition of Think; I would just like to present the main idea here.

I believe that questioning the use of performance enhancers is valuable, as it leads to discussions concerning the legitimacy of rewarding athletes who are using all types of synthetic aids to be better and, ultimately, to win. There are also important ethical questions which occur on the slippery slope between sport in the traditional, amateur, ‘Greek’, understanding of the term, and sport played by super-enhanced, ‘semi-human’, and extremely well-paid athletes. If technology allowed one to alter one’s genes, or to attach robotic arms, legs, etc to become better at a sport (or for that matter, better human beings), should we allow it?

Technological innovations are present in all sports, and at all levels. Companies like Nike, Adidas, Speedo, New Balance and Reebok are constantly striving to manufacture products which give athletes the edge over their opponents. For example, swimmers are now using full-body suits made out of material that minimizes friction with the water. Yes, would come the reply, but how much difference do these suits really make? Well, since it was introduced in February, 19 long-course world swimming records have been set, all but one of those by a swimmer wearing Speedo’s new LZR suit. Coincidence? I think not (see
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__sport/&articleid=337502)

Spiked athletic shoes are also standard issue today. These shoes have been proved to reduce times by full seconds by virtue of the better grip, and therefore propulsion, that they afford the athlete. Simply put, if you don’t wear them, you are going to lose.
The examples above of swimmers and track athletes are particularly good ones as they both involve sports that have been the traditional bastions of those blowing the anti-doping trumpet the loudest. But isn’t this remarkable, as it seems athletes can use any technology (clothes, shoes, heart-rate monitors etc) to help them beat their opponent, as long as this technology is put on the outside of the body. Yes, comes the immediate response, but when you take performance enhancers, you are not competing. It is some super-you; you are performing way beyond your natural capacity. People who use this line of argument are simply (and conveniently) omitting the impact of new technology. Don’t swimming suits and running spikes do exactly the same thing? Anyone arguing from an “all athletes need equal footing” perspective is going to have to go the whole way and have us all passing the baton barefoot and naked.

This then is the double standard present today in professional sport: we allow technological improvements in equipment, like the Speedo LZR above, to help our athletes, but declare using (some) technological improvements in synthetic stimulants for the same ends illegal. This is not an argument for all types of steroids to be made available whole-sale to the public; I feel that this could well endanger many lives. I suggest as well that the best argument against drugs of this nature will come from the harm they may do our athletes. Some athletes might also want to argue (quite fairly) that they don’t want to risk their lives to compete and win, and that others willingness to do this puts them at a disadvantage. The fact is that many safe performance enhancers are banned alongside those that are dangerous – why not just ban the dangerous ones? I am not offering a complete policy on performance enhancers; I am merely asking us to rethink our intuitive reactions towards performance enhancers.

Fairness and Performance-Enhancing Drugs

There is an ongoing debate about the use of performance-enhancing substances such as steroids, human growth hormone, and EPO amid scandals and allegations involving elite athletes such as Barry Bonds, Floyd Landis, and Roger Clemens, among others. One argument often given against the use of performance-enhancing drugs is as follows:

(1) The use of certain performance-enhancing substances constitutes a form of cheating.
(2) Therefore, the use of such substances is fundamentally unfair.
(3) Such unfairness should not be allowed in sport.
(C) The use of certain performance-enhancing substances should not be allowed.

There is some initially plausibility to this argument. It does strike one as unfair that a cyclist might win a race because he used EPO, when his opponents did not. However, as W.M. Brown points out in his "As American as Gatorade and Apple Pie: Performance Drugs and Sports," this argument misses the point in an important way. If we are considering whether or not the bans in professional leagues and international competitions like the Olympic Games should be in place, then arguing that they should be forbidden because they are against the rules is not relevant and begs the question. What is required is a justification for the rules themselves.

Moreover, another problem arises when considering issues related to fairness. There are numerous inequalities that might lead one to conclude unfairness is simply a part of sport. For example, financial resources, quality of equipment, availability of well-funded training centers, excellence of coaching, and so on could create inequalities that directly or indirectly impact athletic performance. The upshot is that we need an argument showing why some inequalities are acceptable, whereas others are not. My own view is that introducing at least some performance-enhancing substances is wrong, though I'll save my reasons for that position for a later post.