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Let the Games Be Doped
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Aug 13, 2008 03:32 PM
from the hobble-out-for-amputations dept.
from the hobble-out-for-amputations dept.
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.""
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Sure, and then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
... we could allow mopeds in Tour de Frace :o)
Re:Sure, and then.... (Score:5, Funny)
I draw the line at androids! no athlete should have less then 40% natural body parts! THEIR body parts!
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Re:Sure, and then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're being modded funny, but you should also be modded insightful, because that is probably how it would start. It would end with the Men's 1500 meters being won by a chap in a Formula 1 car, or perhaps a helicopter. Afterall - why not? All sports have arbitrary rules, designed to keep the game and competition fun. Without them, the game becomes a simple and boring arms race.
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Re:Sure, and then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sure, and then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
--
JimFive
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Re:Sure, and then.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong direction, everyone should be riding the exact same bike. The Tour is about the athletes not the equipment.
It's a bicycle race. The equipment is a huge part of it (it's what the sport is named after). Foot racing is all about the athletes. Cycling, by its very nature, is about both.
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Re:Sure, and then.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd love if we created "The People's Olympics" where we draw at random who is going to participate. If the people in your country are more fit than the others, you have more chances to collect medals. No proxy to do all the competition for you.
We just have to draw lots of names to account for people who won't come.
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Re:Sure, and then.... (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong direction, everyone should be riding the exact same bike. The Tour is about the athletes not the equipment.
I completely disagree with this. There are approximately 200 athletes in the Tour de France and I think it would be cruel and unusual to make them share one bike. It would be hard enough to get them to fit on there let alone figure out who actually won.
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Anybody remember? (Score:5, Insightful)
East German Gymnasts?
That is reason enough.
Re:Anybody remember? (Score:5, Funny)
Well if it is your mother, she is quite mannish.
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Won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Drugs don't make you perfect all at one, there's still hard work to be done and if used liberally or even a little improperly, many of these 'sport enhancing' drugs can destroy a person's fitness.
There's no sense in setting arbitrary boundaries, you just get to square one again, I think the author suggests the only reasonable way to commit to allowing people to drug themselves is to do it without a limit.
There's no chance or even a good reason to take money out of competition. Some of these people spend their entire waking lives preparing for these events; there's just no room for a regular job. Sponsorship is vital and winning should be rewarded for the sacrifice.
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Re:Won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Well, for MY money, I'd like to see how far the human body can be willingly pushed. I mean, they are doping anyway...so for the people that want to, let them, and see how much faster/stronger they become. It's their choice how much they are willing to take or risk overdose. It's also current athletes choice how hard they train, or push themselves at an event.
And there is other side benefits, as the article suggested, like there being alot more data to reliably check athletes that aren't in the dope olympics.
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Re:Won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasons may be purely economic if you take a broad enough view of economics to render your final solution impossible. Olympic athletes have done just as much doping as professional ones. They don't get paid for their olympic performances, but they benefit economically in other ways (endorsements, and special career opportunities that come with celebrity status). Besides, sponsors and coaches may have money on the line in more direct ways, and could pressure amateurs. To eliminate all this, you'd have to *fully* eliminate the money incentive, which means that nobody is even interested.
But I don't think the reasons are purely economic anyway. People cheat all the time for little reason but just to win. Have you ever just dominated a little kid at checkers? The last thing they do before throwing the board at you is to try to cheat. People like winning. People that like winning even more than most are much more likely to train hard in sports for their whole lives. And people that have trained very hard are likely to become more determined to win, in order to validate that their effort was worth something. These people want to win a lot and they're surrounded by people that also want them to win.
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Re:Won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Make doping legal and you destroy the games. Pure and simple. You will effectively turn the games into more comedy than sport when you suddenly start seeing crazy side-effects resulting from all kinds of dope combinations.
In addition, you will also be forcing athletes to dope if they ever want to have a hope of winning. That cannot be a good thing because you're forcing them to basically destroy themselves mentally and physically.
Finally, if you were the athlete and you were all doped up because you had to and you won a race, would you not wonder whether it was you or the dope? Do we want to take that sense of achievement away from our athletes? Definitely not.
The Olympics are there to show us what the human body is capable of when trained. Not when doped. Make that a separate event, where they can dope and then see how many will want to participate when they know others will be too.
What encourages doping in an athlete is the drive to win at any cost and a mentality that makes them cheat. Cheating is a reality and will always be a problem that has to be dealt with until we have a way to make it impossible to cheat. Its the mental drive to break rules if necessary. Do you seriously think that new rules will help the cause?
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An Immodest Proposal... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:An Immodest Proposal... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, given your example I wouldn't let my kid take these drugs, if the side effects overshadow their life. But the drugs that are banned go beyond ones like steroids and into the realm of performance enhancement.
For instance Creatine. Would I let my daughter take it if she wanted to use it to better her work outs? Scientifically I have no reason not to. Ephedrine? I got a problem with it. Steroids? Never. There is a huge difference between them all though. You can't just say "drugs bad" and then move on. And that is my point. What drugs are we talking about? People think it's all steroids and you end up with "Bob had bitch tits". But that's not true. These anti-doping organizations are going the extra mile and saying anything that isn't on the approved list is against the rules, regardless of scientific merit in using them. Why? Because the bogeyman that's why.
If anything it's simply patronizing us all putting them all under the controlled substance label or insinuating that anyone that wishes to take a chemical is somehow a dirt bag, well that's nonsense imo.
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Re:An Immodest Proposal... (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree with your first statement. I think it depends on what sport you are talking about. Take football for example, where even from an early age, many kids who show a genetic or physical aptitude for the sport begin training to become specialized athletic instruments. In Texas, and other southern states, it is not terribly uncommon for parents to hold their children back a year in school so that they will be bigger to compete in football.
At the professional level, our current stock of "drug free" football players are some of the most fearsome and amazing physical specimens to ever walk the earth. And the willingness already inherent to the sport to risk life and limb for results is already accepted by both athlete and fan. Do some reading on what it's like to be a lineman in between games or off season. Read about how a lot of these former players have completely ruined their bodies in regard to retirement. The nature of game as I describe here would welcome the next stage in human evolution. Players who are accustomed to sacrificing their bodies for the game will gladly volunteer for doping, "bionic" body treatments and the like. Plus, since our society is unfortunately much more centered on professional sports, than on education and science, doing so will immediately create a high budget research field for human enhancement, both at the molecular and the tissue levels. No one is holding a gun to these athletes' heads, (not in this country anyway) telling them to do these things to themselves. If a grown man of consentual age wants to put himself in harm's way, I see no need to intervene.
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Re:An Immodest Proposal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Permitting doping in any sport is the road to that sport's ruin.
I wish that were the case.
Bodybuilding didn't take off until steroids entered the picture. The "natural" bodybuilding events (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_bodybuilding [wikipedia.org] ) are basically niche sports by comparison.
American football does pretty well, and while performance drug use is not technically allowed it's been essentially overlooked since steroids entered the league in 1962. Nobody has the same "strike them from the record books" outcry against teams like the 1970s Steelers and 1980s 49ers dynasties who had players that are well-known to have used performance enhancing drugs regularly. Even with the increased public pressure against them, you see the Carolina Panthers and others (Rodney Harrison with the Pats, Chris Henry with the Titans, really tons of others not limited to any small set of teams) get tiny slaps on the wrist and at most maybe a 4-game suspension.
Heck, rather than outrage you actually see people writing things about guys like Shaun Merriman like "17 sacks in 12 games last year? Without the 4 game steroid suspension that extrapolates to 22.67 sacks for the season and the NFL record is 22.5!"
Hardly seems like people care enough about extant widespread use for it to ruin the sport.
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I've already seen this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I've already seen this (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.broadcaster.com/clip/9253 [broadcaster.com]
Should work... if not... in the "All Drug Olympics" "Sergei Akmudov(?)" is going for the world weightlifting record (over 1500 pounds)... and proceeds to rip his arms out of his sockets.
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And then the olympics will die. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:And then the olympics will die. (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it. They say the gene splicing will be untraceable so it will be a moot point to attempt to screen athletes. It will infiltrate all sports... not just the Olympics. And if this is the case, then shouldn't droids be allowed to compete?
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Re:And then the olympics will die. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. You don't get to be a world class athlete by being "normal". Why, for example, is having crazy high hematocrit because your ancestors have been gasping for air at MANYthousand feet above sea level since forever good, while having crazy high hematocrit because you've been shooting a little EPO evil?
The whole thing looks particularly silly with the "biological passport" system they've been pushing. Because athletes are carefully selected freaks, they can't easily tell which ones are doping and which ones are just naturally high in testosterone or whatever(Wait! You mean that the world's best athletes are likely to have naturally high concentrations of chemicals that aid athletic performance? Shocking!). So, the idea is to do exhaustive historical testing, so as to decide what is "natural" for that athlete(rather than the current system of just assigning an arbitrary cutoff point).
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Re:And then the olympics will die. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Also, by effectively forcing all the competitors to get doped in order to stay competitive, you're also effectively forcing everyone who wants to try out to do the same thing. On down the chain it goes. So essentially every kid with dreams of making it into the Olympics will be encouraged to resort to increasingly dangerous performance enhancements from the get-go.
There's just no reason to condone these sorts of practices. The summary says, "Before you dismiss the notion, consider what we're stuck with today â" a system designed to create a level playing field, protect athletes' health and set an example for children, that fails on all counts." I don't see how encouraging athletes to out-steroid each other is going to help.
If you buy into those sorts of things, then you may as well say, "What if we allowed people to murder each other without legal consequences? Before you dismiss the notion, consider what we're stuck with today-- a system designed to protect people, discourage violence, and punish the guilty, that fails on all counts. People murder other people and get away with it, while other people are falsely accused."
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Re:And then the olympics will die. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you SEEN the swimmers? I know they're taking all sorts of tests to show they aren't doping, but perhaps they've just found another way. I'm wondering if some of them have an extra cloned lung or two, or a surgically expanded chest cavity, or somehting like that.
The swimmers? They're not particularly muscular compared to other, more strength-based sports. Too much muscle makes you a bad swimmer (which is why there's virtually no steroid use in men's swimming).
I was a world ranked swimmer and national finalist in the late 90's, and never took any illegal drugs. In fact, I didn't even use creatine. I was never offered illegal drugs by coaches, and never heard anyone mention them in a positive light. My interest in the sport wasn't to see how much attention I could get no matter the cost. I wanted to see what my (natural) limits were. I really can't vouch for the whole sport, but I can at least say with some confidence that some of my close friends were elite swimmers and didn't do any illegal drugs either. Our unusual V02 ability (compared to nonswimmers) was purely from hours and hours of hard training. I swam more than 25,000 miles in a span of about 10 years.
That said, however, there certainly are cheaters in swimming. I just don't think it's very widespread. Fortunately, except for every 4 years, the whole world basically ignores swimming. That takes away a lot of motivation to cheat. There just isn't much money or fame in it.
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Oblig. bad Car Analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you not entertained?!? (Score:5, Funny)
I think we should give them steroids & in the case of American Football, chainsaws as well.
A couple of hundred years later... (Score:5, Funny)
I think the problem is (Score:5, Interesting)
that what might, in some argument be a sensible behavior for a professional athlete or a full time adult amateur athlete is in no way sensible for young athletes who are essentially practicing in a very publicized hobby.
Calling open season in the upper tiers of athletics would certainly have the effect of more young folks (and hell even that guy who cares too much about company soft ball) doing more drugs, and that isn't healthy and it isn't good.
I don't believe in the criminalization of drugs myself, but for something so explicitly about the body, athletics should really not be helping sell young people on the idea of dangerous chemical recreation.
I hate the drug war, but it is important to note that our world would be a lot better without certain drugs.
Let the Market Decide (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let the Market Decide (Score:5, Insightful)
My bet is that athletes would continue to hide their doping so that they could win the Pure category, and the Open category dies in 2-3 years from lack of interest.
There is no glory in taking the drugs, only in winning.
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because it is not transferable genetically (Score:5, Interesting)
Oblig. Futurama Quote (Score:5, Funny)
FARNSWORTH: He's good, alright. But he's no Clem Johnson. And Johnson played back in the days before steroid injections were mandatory.
BENDER: Clem Johnson? That skin bag wouldn't have lasted one pitch in the old Robot Leagues! Now Wireless Joe Jackson, there was a blern hitting machine!
LEELA: Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns! I mean, come on, Wireless Joe was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.
BENDER: Oh, and I suppose Pitchomat 5000 was just a modified howitzer?
LEELA: Yep.
Garbage (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Garbage (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Playing the game for it's own sake goes out the window the second you start paying a athlete. As long as your paycheck depends on winning your not going to play for the love of the game.
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Re:Garbage (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, first off, the reason to play a competitive gamre is to win, not to play the game. That's why it's called a competition. I, for one, do not relish the thought of a "group swim for the fun of swimming" event at the olympics :)
That said, I recently read a piece in NJ Monthly about the Special Olympics, where a young girl with Downs Syndrome & some other issues was winning a race, and slowed down to hold hands with a competitor to cross the finish line together. Somehow I can't imagine that happening at the regular Olympics, but boy would that make me start to view the world with a little optimism.
another example is of a softball player who hit a home run, but blew out her knee, in her last college appearance. Members of the opposing team picked her up and carried her around the bases, since the rules forbade members of her own team from doing so.
Sportmanship is hard to find in professional sports (and yes, for the most part, olympic athletes are professionals), but it exists at other levels. Sometimes it even exists at the professional level, like in soccer... an example would be when a player is injured, and the other team kicks the ball out of bounds to give a stop in play... and then the favor is returned whenthe injured player's team gives the ball back when play resumes. I just wish it were publicized better, and given attention at the professional level.
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Sci Am had a good peice on this (Score:5, Interesting)
Love the hyperbole (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
I say let 'em go for it. Have an "Unlimited" class of Olympic events, with half-ton, fission-powered, gene-spliced, titanium-boned monstrosities jacked up on nervous system stimulants strong enough to make Case from Neuromancer piss himself. Pole vaulting with nuclear pulse detonation boosters? Biathlon with AEGIS-guided weaponry?
We'd of course need to clear a sufficient radius around the arena so we can squash the frothing bastards' inevitable thirst for global domination by nuking the hell out of them at the "closing ceremonies".
Intelligent article in Scientific American (Score:5, Interesting)
A sound rebuttle against this (Score:5, Insightful)
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..............
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
You should join the debate club with that incredible logic you're using.
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Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
I can see your point.
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Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
Just think of it as evolution in action. Plus how else are you going to get free lab rats for human enhancement technologies? Let the gene and drug doping flow, then we can just cherry pick the ones that stand the test of time and use em on real people.
Only socially constructive use for professional athletes i can think of, anyway ...
/joking
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already the case (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
I say let's create a new set of games specifically for this reason. Let the "all natural" athletes have their own games, and we'll hold separate ones for those who sacrifice their own bodies for their performance.
And why limit it to drugs? I say let them include anything and everything they want so long as it meets two requirements: First, it must be entirely self-contained (no power cables or wireless control links). Second, it must be operated directly from the user's nervous system (eg no buttons or switches - direct wetware interfaces only).
Just think of the medical advances a pharmaceutically and cybernetically enhanced olympics could produce once it catches on!
=Smidge=
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Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
We shouldn't let journalists dope either. Case in point: this article.
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Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
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Where do you draw the line? (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW Using a steriod cream for psoriasis is very different to taking the amounts used for body building/weight lifting, though the steroid cream would possibly trigger first-level tests.
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