The bigger fallout from doping and WADA is the "drugs are bad" story it pushes. This leads to things like "anti doping" in e-games. Or calling students using mind-enhancing drugs cheaters. We should wholeheartedly embrace people using medical technology to improve themselves, rather than being slaves to genetics and limited by the money they have for exotic training methods.
The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#32I am not aware of any system of morality in which "but everyone else did it" is considered to be a watertight argument. I feel strongly about matter, having competed in weightlifting, because of the recent influx of steroid apologists into the weightlifting community. The question of whether PEDs should be allowed is distinct from whether they are allowed. A sport is an arbitrary collection of objectively determinabl…
This is how I've felt for a long time, but I think how a lot of PED apologists argue is that they believe they have a right to interpret the rules as they see fit, to find corner cases that the established rules do not cover and exploit them to their advantage. They are letter-of-lawyers versus spirit-of-lawyers.
Is "Moneyball" cheating? Is playing for overall points rather than wins cheating (for series competitions, like racing)?
So when it comes to the drug issue, if the rules say "no testosterone levels over a certain degree" rather than "no drugs", then the apologist would say using drugs is within the rules, if it doesn't raise testosterone levels above that predetermined degree.
I don't agree, but it's difficult to say where one draws the line between poorly written rules and cheating.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#33I don't necessarily have a problem with professional athletes doping in a black box, i.e. free of influencing others. Professionals should be fully aware of the health effects of "riding the bicycle," and it's hard for me to argue against telling people what they can do to their own bodies. I always thought, however, that the big issue with steroids was the role that athletes play in the lives of children and teenage…
I tried to find the original reasoning for banning doping and couldn't do so. According to Wikipedia the IOC banned doping in the 1960s after some sports federations began to do so. It was widespread at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Olympic_Games#Re...
Could it be simply part of a conservative response to drug-taking in the 1960's? Reefer madness? I don't know.
Please comment if you can find a source. If we know the original reasoning, then it would be good to critique it 50 years later.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#34Why are musicians allowed (and maybe expected) to use performance enhancing drugs, while athletes may not?
Because we don't have a lot of rules for musicians. Of the rules we do have, they are a social contract rather than a binding rules committee. And of those rules, none of them govern drugs. Plagiarism, yes, but drugs, no.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#35It's a simple information problem: identify who the dopers are and put them into their own events, with separate record keeping. We can have a world record for a 100 meter doped sprint, and one for the undoped sprints.
Already there are men's and women's separate records. In some sports there are additional categories, like weight range. Also age groups.
Doping itself then isn't cheating, but rather competing, while doped, in an undoped category. Analogous as a man pretending to be a woman.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#36The main issue I see is how do we allow adults to dope while keeping children/teens away from it? Or would doping even increase with children/teens if it were more widely acceptable amongst adults? When I was in high school there were plenty of athletes using steroids - so already happening. Although I do believe that number would increase especially within high schools.
"Think of the children" is always the worst argument possible. This is about education as with all drugs and not that stupid "roid rage" video they made me watch with Ben Affleck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FvlIwuQBO8 There was an assumption that legal weed in Colorado would lead to more children using but data suggest the opposite happened. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/07/pot-use-among...
It's a bad argument, but I wouldn't say it's the worst. "Hitler thought of it first" is worse, but still probably not "the worst".
"I am rubber, you are glue" is a good contender. "Such-and-such argument is the worst" is probably pretty high in the running, too.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#37We could just start new sports leagues that allow doping. It would be interesting to watch the NFL if people were bigger and angrier than they already are.
Are you suggesting that most professional leagues don't allow doping? The NFL is full of drugs they just sweep it under the rug until the public notices. Kind of like Professional Bodybuilding. Everyone knows they are on drugs but we just kind of ignore it. It seems like even the DEA ignores it until you make it so obvious they have to respond. I always finding it shocking when people think pro athletes don't do as m…
I agree that it is similar to security theatre. The federations want to give the impression that they are clean without the pain of declaring their star athletes dirty. No-one has an interest in a failed test. They do have an interest in appearing to be clean.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#38I don't necessarily have a problem with professional athletes doping in a black box, i.e. free of influencing others. Professionals should be fully aware of the health effects of "riding the bicycle," and it's hard for me to argue against telling people what they can do to their own bodies. I always thought, however, that the big issue with steroids was the role that athletes play in the lives of children and teenage…
I tried to find the original reasoning for banning doping and couldn't do so. According to Wikipedia the IOC banned doping in the 1960s after some sports federations began to do so. It was widespread at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Olympic_Games#Re... Could it be simply part of a conservative response to drug-taking in the 1960's? Reefer madness? I don't know. Please comment if you can find a…
I don't have a source, but possibly a rationale you might agree with: It tarnishes records.
Mark McGuire destroyed the home run record, and then it was discovered he was using juice. Would he have broken it either way? Maybe, we'll never know.
You can argue that baseball stadiums shape changes over time, bat technology changes, we learn more about nutrition and training, etc. and they're valid points. That should be how records are broken naturally. It diminishes the achievement, to me, when those before you did it naturally, and you did not.
Would lance have won that many tours, and in a row? Maybe, but now we'll never know, and its a record that may never be broken naturally. Yes, I realize its not actually an official record anymore.
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#39I don't necessarily have a problem with professional athletes doping in a black box, i.e. free of influencing others. Professionals should be fully aware of the health effects of "riding the bicycle," and it's hard for me to argue against telling people what they can do to their own bodies. I always thought, however, that the big issue with steroids was the role that athletes play in the lives of children and teenage…
> ... it's hard for me to argue against telling people what they can do to their own bodies.
This isn't a broad dictation, though. This is athlete governing agencies working to protect the "purity" of sport. Participating in those associations means you follow their rules: don't want to follow their rules? Don't join.
You're more than welcome to start a competitor to Union Cycliste Internationale and announce that doping in your sponsored events is allowed. But in this group, you're required to dope (to be competitive). And now you're back to effectively telling people what to do to their own bodies.
> It's really not okay for high school athletes to use steroids.
At what point do we transition from "not ok" to "people can do what they want to their own bodies"? Age 18? What about parents who authorize plastic surgery for their 16 year olds—can they authorize doping regimens, too?
So then we're back to standards and sports governing bodies. The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) says "no steroids". NFL/NBA/etc. says "A-OK". What about NCAA?
We can draw the line that says, "steroids for professionals only", but that sets up a chicken-or-egg scenario. To play on a professional level, you have to dope, but to dope, you have to play on a professional level. How does one become a professional, then?
Re: The Moral Argument for Doping in Sports
#40Why are musicians allowed (and maybe expected) to use performance enhancing drugs, while athletes may not?
Do musicians actually use PEDs? How would they help?