|
|
|
chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
 Posted - 08/12/2008 : 12:53:08
|
The NYT ran this article about doping and raised a number of interesting questions which I've quoted:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/science/12tier.html?partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
What if we let athletes do whatever they wanted to excel?
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. |
What's a level playing field again? First, nobody starts on a level playing field since our ultimate capability is determined by our genes, aka the luck of the draw. Second, if you lack the means to take your innate abilities - wealth, guidance, culture - and hone them into a finely tuned sports machine, you'll never become a champion. Show me a level playing field anywhere...
| 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. |
Any thoughts on this? Did Landis dope? Was that test scientifically flawed? Are others flawed? It seems like a hefty claim to me - I assumed after he exhausted his appeals and his second set of samples tested positive that he was guilty. But if the test is not reliable....
| So what we have now is not a level playing field. The system punishes some innocent athletes and rewards others with the savvy and the connections not to get caught. |
Isn't this pretty much how everything works? In every beuracratic system I've been a part of there's the 'official rules' and then there's the other rule set that those in the know can exploit for advantage. Not that that's an argument pro or against, just observing...
In the British Medical Journal last month, more than 30 scholars signed a statement supporting an article co-authored by Dr. Kayser calling the current system a failure that needs to be changed. The article also criticized the medical authorities for undermining their credibility with “prophylactic lies” that exaggerate the dangers of drugs like anabolic steroids based “on scant evidence tainted by a misguided moralistic motivation to protect sports.”
No one denies that there are risks in taking drugs like anabolic steroids, and there is wide agreement that minors shouldn't be allowed to take them (or other performance drugs). But the popular fear of steroid use by adults is based in large part on a few sensationalized cases, like the news articles blaming steroids for the fatal brain tumor of Lyle Alzado, the former football player.
“You'd be on firmer scientific ground blaming his brain cancer on beer drinking,” said Norman Fost, a professor of pediatrics and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. “The claims of the common fatal or irreversible harms of anabolic steroids are without any medical foundation. There's no reason to think the risk of injury or death is as high as the risk from simply playing sports like football or baseball.” |
This is fascinating. It reminds me of when I was a kid and Nancy Reagan was telling us all to just say no. This is drugs, this is your brain on drugs.
Yet cocaine and heroine really arn't 100% lethally addictive. Neither is ecstacy. But you'd never know millions of people have used thest drugs recreationally - and more
|
-Chaloobi
|
|
|
tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 13:34:16 [Permalink]
|
It always seems strange to me on a level to prohibit doping because of the fairness argument. We also use all possible other technologies to help the athletes. Better bikes, better training methods, better swimming suits, better ice skates. Allowing doping might actually provide for a more even playing field, since it would bring out the means used in the open. This would make it at least possible for all athletes to do the same.
I could imagine doping use restricted for health issues. Often doping has detrimental effects on health that should give any athlete using them pause. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
 |
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 14:17:05 [Permalink]
|
I've been an advocate of letting professional athletes do whatever it is they want to do for a long time.
They do it anyway, and if we let them do it in a controlled environment, with legitimate medical supervision, I think their health and wellbeing would be better served.
In the very near future, probably less than 10 years, athletes will be able to modify their genes as well. There are a couple of methods well established in mice for increasing muscle mass via genetic manipulation. You can currently do this in a small lab, for small cost. (Adeno Associated Virus has been modified to carry a gene into muscle cells that instructs them to turn on specific genes(IGF-1), resulting in bigger muscles with no excercise) This has had significant life extending effects in mice, and would probably do the same in humans. Say nothing of the potential to treat muscle wasting diseases.
The only way, currently, to detect this would be via muscle biopsy. Don't think any athlete is going to submit to that in the days before competition or during a season.
So I'm all for "doping" in pro sports.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Siberia
SFN Addict
Brazil
2322 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 14:26:37 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by tomk80
I could imagine doping use restricted for health issues. Often doping has detrimental effects on health that should give any athlete using them pause.
|
I'd think allowing doping might encourage the athletes to take more and more of the drug and potentially bringing themselves into an overdose. But then again; as adults, they should know the risks and know how to restrain themselves. |
"Why are you afraid of something you're not even sure exists?"
- The Kovenant, Via Negativa
"People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs."
-- unknown
|
|
|
|
Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2008 : 15:52:21 [Permalink]
|
If we say it's okay for adults to do it, kids will soon follow, whether it's legal for them to use doping or not. The Olympics is full of adult and kid athletes. (Unless you consider 16 an adult.) For health reasons, I am against doping.
Also, while it's true that the playing field is never level, I would stick with the best training and good genes. I don't like the idea of someone drugging himself to a win. It just feels wrong to me. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
|
|
|
Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2008 : 09:57:27 [Permalink]
|
Ricky said:
| Replacing a lot of this work with a drug will diminish the sport. |
Well, here's the thing. Taking performance enhancing drugs does not reduce the time/effort/commitment it takes to be a competitive athlete.
It just increased the payoff from the hard work.
If I sat here at home and gave myself testoterone injections every week, I'd just get fat and grow bigger man-boobs. I wouldn't get more muscle or increased endurance.
My advocacy for performance enhancement only extends to pro sports. Not olympics/world cup stuff. Most pro sports don't really test, they just pay lip service to drug testing. Baseball announces the tests in advance, gives players warning.... and lets the teams collect specimens on their own.
I think the athletes would be better off if doping were allowed, and was done under strict medical supervision. Have some rules about safe dose limits and what substances can be used, etc.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2008 : 11:45:32 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dude
If I sat here at home and gave myself testoterone injections every week, I'd just get fat and grow bigger man-boobs. |
You have manboobs? |
-Chaloobi
|
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2008 : 12:34:53 [Permalink]
|
Not noticible ones, but they were a gift from puberty. If I slack off excercise...
May just get them chopped off one day.
 |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Im Cool Trust Me
New Member
United Kingdom
14 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2008 : 13:24:00 [Permalink]
|
I see nothing wrong with the current prohibitions, the problem is that the testing is not enforced perfectly, and perhaps never will be. Allowing people to go to any lengths to win will undoubtedly result in some serious over-use of performance enhancing substances causing long term health problems such as those seen by professional wrestlers. There is a big difference between using your natural abilities and using AAS or growth hormones, by permitting all kinds of drugs the result would be a chemical arms race and the atheletes would be the ones to suffer.
Also another issue is the legality of performance enhancers in various countries. |
Dig your claws into my organs! Stretch into my tendons! Bury your anchors into my bones!
"Force, my friends, is violence: the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived. Naked force has resolved more issues throughout history than any other means. The common thinking, that violence never solves anything, is wishful thinking at it's worst! People who forget that always pay." |
| Edited by - Im Cool Trust Me on 08/13/2008 13:30:49 |
|
|
|
chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2008 : 06:07:17 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dude
Not noticible ones, but they were a gift from puberty. If I slack off excercise...
May just get them chopped off one day.
|
Double manstechtomy?  |
-Chaloobi
|
|
|
|
chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2008 : 06:12:06 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Im Cool Trust Me
I see nothing wrong with the current prohibitions, the problem is that the testing is not enforced perfectly, and perhaps never will be. Allowing people to go to any lengths to win will undoubtedly result in some serious over-use of performance enhancing substances causing long term health problems such as those seen by professional wrestlers. There is a big difference between using your natural abilities and using AAS or growth hormones, by permitting all kinds of drugs the result would be a chemical arms race and the atheletes would be the ones to suffer.
Also another issue is the legality of performance enhancers in various countries.
|
I think some kind of 'enhanced' league should be allowed. Per the article, the evidence that performance enhancing drugs are dangerous is pretty light. And I see no reason to restrict freedom to enhance so long as it's not particularly dangerous and it is done openly. My guess is it would be very successful and there'd probably be plenty of mainstream medical spin-off technology. |
-Chaloobi
|
|
|
|
greatdane_80
New Member
Denmark
5 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2008 : 07:07:40 [Permalink]
|
Hi everyone,
I think there is one point in this debate that hasn't been adressed yet in this thread. Of course there is no such thing as a level playing field. No matter how much I trained, I would never win the 100m dash at the Olympics. However, I would like to think that in the hypothetical situation where 2 athletes had the exact same natural ability, the one who practiced harder, longer and better would win. If we allow doping, this would mean an even greater disparity between the haves and the have nots. The US, China, Russia etc., would be able to spend an awfully large budget on developing new, better more powerful drugs which would be kept secret from the competition. Essentially, the bigger the budget, the better doping drugs would be available. This to me would go against the essence of fair sportsmanship. |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2008 : 07:13:12 [Permalink]
|
Pretty much. From what I understand its just some liposuction these days.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2008 : 08:37:42 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by greatdane_80
I If we allow doping, this would mean an even greater disparity between the haves and the have nots. The US, China, Russia etc., would be able to spend an awfully large budget on developing new, better more powerful drugs which would be kept secret from the competition. Essentially, the bigger the budget, the better doping drugs would be available. |
Reliance on high tech would not work in the traditional olympics for just that reason. But there is a special olympics today. Why not an enhanced olympics? More likely to happen, I see no reason why an enhanced football, baseball or basketball league should be illegal. |
-Chaloobi
|
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2008 : 08:56:26 [Permalink]
|
The thing we should keep in mind here also is gene modification. This is going to be easy to do (as in, home based labs, for very little money) in the near future.
There is the possibility that this type of thing will pose no health risk to athletes (or anyone), and will be virtually undetectable via blood or urine samples.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
 |
|
Embrace Doping?
