Swedish Athletes Back GPS Implants to Combat Drug Use 299
paulraps writes "Swedish athletes Carolina Klüft and Stefan Holm have proposed a radical technological measure to stop top level competitors from taking performance-enhancing drugs. Klüft and Holm, reigning Olympic champions in the heptathlon and high-jump events, argue that competitors at the highest level should either have computer chips implanted into their skin or GPS transmitters attached to their training bags so that the authorities can keep tabs on them at all times."
Stupid Scientists (Score:2, Insightful)
-Peter
Sport is dead (Score:2, Insightful)
Monitoring. (Score:3, Insightful)
really bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Then the chip might be able to monitor a bit more about you. What level of hormone x or y, diseases or how oxygenated your blood is. They could figure out your mood. What's next? Perhaps a feedback loop. If hormone x is too high get the chip to release an electric signal. You insurance company might drop you if they don't like your lifestyle as measured by the chip. Child custody dispute...go look at the data from the chip. Then I am betting some people who remove their chips be criminalized for doing so.
Beyond or the legal uses will be the illegal ones. People hacking into the database to plan the perfect robbery or the perfect blackmailing.. Or the FBI abusing its powers to snoop anyway.
The worst part about it is that it is so unnecessary. Some athletes do drugs. Big deal. They are hurting themselves. Perhaps hurting professional sports. Are we going to sacrifice personal liberty to ensure the integrity of professional sports. And please don't give me 'its for the children'. If we followed that excuse every time we would end up with a police state and no freedom.
Who's next (Score:1, Insightful)
Kids in school?
People in prisons?
Any one who does not vote the way the TPTB want them to.
Cops?
People in the army?
Compare to Babe Ruth (Score:3, Insightful)
He made all his home runs, etc. while drinking and whoring, and looking like a fat pig.
Most of his home runs had to have been made while he was dealing with a massive hang over.
Now Barry Bonds has to lower the pitcher's mound, shoot up, and use mechanical assists to score as much as Babe.
Put an asterisk next to Barry's name and move on.
Re:Huh. (Score:1, Insightful)
What a stupid, stupid idea.
Current Oly athletes (and prospects) need to keep WADA abreasts of *where* they are in advance so WADA officials can show up from time to time to get a random test done.
So let us not take technology lessons from 'jocks,' k?
Re:Sport is dead (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Compare to Babe Ruth (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stupid Scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
Come up with performance enhancing drugs that don't have long term side-effects, then we can talk about allowing them in sports.
It won't work -- and could backfire (Score:4, Insightful)
Obvious point first: knowing where someone is doesn't tell you what they're doing. They could be watching TV in their basement, or they could be watching TV while getting a blood transfusion. And so on. (And the training bags? Easy enough to have someone else transport them around while the owner is elsewhere.)
And using such a technique could open up vulnerabilities, as in "Hmmm.... Johann is not in his assigned room in the team dorm at the Pan-Am Games, so this would be a good time to plant the syringes there." I'm sure some creative thought will reveal other possibilities.
More generally though -- and I speak as someone who's competed at the national level and served on my sport's national board of directors -- everyone (including the IOC) knows that there's no way to stop anyone from doping if they're sufficiently careful and sufficiently clever. The tests just can't keep up with newly-developed methods, and the boundaries between legitimate medications (e.g., anti-sting kits for those who risk anaphylactic shock if stung by an insect) and performance-enhancing drugs are often blurred.
The best clues are often available to coaches and other team staff, who have detailed performance data on all athletes and should be able to spot anomalies. However, they don't have much motivation to share these observations -- with anyone. Which is why one of the things that needs to happen is that the governing bodies for each sport need to emphasize doping detection by coaches as much (or possibly more) as they do results production...and that means "put it in their contracts".
And those of us who watch sports need to do something as well: we need to lose our winning-is-everything, second-place-means-losing mentality. (That includes the media, by the way.) That attitude fuels a number of unpleasant trends in sports, not just doping. We need to keep in mind that the reason athletes go to events like the Olympics is not to win -- but to participate. When we show the same respect and admiration for the effort of the last-place finisher in the 10K, or the basketball team that loses by 50, or the skier who falls, as we do for the gold medal winners, then we'll have done our part to remove part of the motivation/temptation that drives doping.
Re:Stupid Scientists (Score:3, Insightful)
Human emotion? Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I'm sorry, but exactly which fundamental human emotion was at work there? Do we have that fundamental an instinct to kill each other? Or what?
It and the closely related notion of "chivalry" was also warped to fit the current interests of the rich and powerful, and included such quirks as:
- while you were supposed to afford chivalry and honour to the enemy nobles and knights, because they could be ransomed for good money, it was perfectly ok to kill prisoners if they're pesants and mercenary. (Before Agincourt, for example, Henry V told his troops that while the nobles would be captured and held for ransome, everyone else damn better fight for their lives. And just to illustrate that he _was_ right, when the French managed to capture the undefended English baggage train, they did kill the unarmed attendants and page boys, mostly children.)
- same about your fucking _own_ troops, if they're of low birth. (E.g., at Crecy, the French knights rode over their own Genoese crossbowmen mercenaries, who were retreating after taking heavy losses from the English crossbowmen. Apparently precisely _because_ of such a fucked up idea of honour: the knights were apparently disgusted that the mercenary cowards wouldn't stand there and die gladly for the king.)
- but it's ok to kill the captured nobles too, if you can't hold on to them or it's otherwise too inconvenient. (E.g., Henry V at Agincourt again.)
- and those rules of chivalry only applied if you weren't outnumbered or something (See, the Black Prince.)
- and while chest-thumping about honour and chivalry in battle, it was ok to loot the peasants' grain for your troops and horses along your way. Both enemy peasants and your own.
- the same knights who'd be all chivalrous to other knights, had no problem with beating their wives _literally_ senseless. (There are "manuals" for knights who recommended exactly that. Oh, and at least one recommended breaking the wife's nose, so other guys won't find her pretty while you're away.)
Etc, etc, etc.
And just so I'm not so euro-centric, the Japanese atrocities in WW2 were almost all motivated by a fucked-up feudal idea of "honour" too.
The massacre of Nanking, for example, was because the oh-so-honourable Japanese warriors were disgusted at the idea that an enemy soldier would do something as dishonourable as throwing away their uniform and hiding among the civilians instead of surrendering. So, you know, going on a rape and massacre rampage was the proper way to punish that dishonour.
Or their atrocious treatment of prisoners was motivated, or at least rationalized, by some fucked up idea that a properly honourable warrior dies, but never surrenders. So obviously the enemies that surrendered were so dishonoured, as to not even qualify as humans any more.
To make things funny, some of those exaggerated ideas of Samurai honour and valour, stemmed from an era where Japan had no wars for hundreds of years. So they wrote a lot about being fearless and stuff, without having actually seen a battlefield in their lives, and knowing that they probably never will. And each author tried to sound even more completely fearless than the previous generation... on paper.
Etc.
So, heh, human emotion? The history of "honour" is just a codified justification for being an arsehole. It was part indoctrination so some dolts would go die for you, and part rationalization of why you're an arsehole and it's good to be one. The only good aspects of it, were the ones where you stood to make a personal gain. E.g., yeah, you were supposed to be honourable and hospitable with captured nobles, because they could be ransomed, but that didn't extend to anyone who couldn't be ransomed.
Re:Human emotion? Heh. (Score:1, Insightful)
A person's honor, in the Ancient world, was his worth, his value both in his eyes and in the eyes of his community. No honor = you're a nobody, a loser, you might just as well keel over and die since you're worthless. Because most of these cultures were also collectivist cultures, remaining 'honorable' might have required you to do what the community/king asked of you. But you cannot simple conflate these two things and claim that honor is *really* nothing but blind obedience.
Re:Human emotion? Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)
In Swedish, there are two words that translate roughly to the English "honour", they are "heder" and "ära". "Ära" is closely related to "glory", but is not necessarily exactly the same, and is often translated as "honour".
So while what you were saying is true, it does not paint the whole picture due to the ambiguity of the English word "honour". Further, the germanic pre-christian notion of honour had nothing to do with being good to your king, but being true to ones word. If you made a pledge to the king, you were of course bound to that, but making that pledge were something you decided about and not something you had to do.
Minor distinction (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about "community" and whatnot, is good and fine, but it never was that much of a "collectivist" thing since... oh, the early stone age or so. It was some self-appointed leaders and there were the guys who served them. Whether as formalized as slavery or serfdom, or just tribal shamans/chieftains/etc exploiting everyone else, the difference isn't that massive.
Whether you lived or died, or whether you were a nobody, very rarely had to do with what everyone else really thought. It had to do with what said noble/chieftain/shaman told them to think.
And you rarely had a choice about pledging to such a leader. You were pledged de facto or even de jure by just being born there. You were held to notions of duty, honour, obedience to your liege (or tribal equivalent) whether you wanted it or not.
And if you wanted to move up the social pyramid at all, it invariably required some such pledge too. If you moved to (or even were born into) the warrior class, you'd have to pledge your life to the warlord. If you moved to the city, you pledged your life and sword arm to whatever demagogue weaseled his way into being "community leader" there. Etc.
I'm sorry, but in any modern interpretation, a pledge under duress would be considered null and void from the start. If your choices are between (A) pledge, and (B) die one way or another, that's blackmail. And honour was invariably twisted into just pretending to be totally devoted to whoever blackmailed you there.
And, yeah, sometimes it was disguised as duty "to the community", "to the country", "to God", and other such fine double-speak. Guess what? It invariably meant doing what that leader wanted done. It rarely had anything to do with the desires or aspirations of any other individual in that community.
So the medieval version isn't that far off from what it meant in ancient times too. In fact, it was just a continuation. In ancient Greece or Rome you'd be just as automatically pledged to be a soldier of whatever tyrant ruled your city state, and judged "honourable" or "dishonourable" by whether you bought a shield and spear and joined in their silly wars. That is, if you were born high enough to qualify as such. If not, it was your duty to stay and work the fields like a good slave.
In Rome, since you mention antiquity... well, go look the Cursus Honorum [wikipedia.org] up some day. It was just a codified way to gain any political power, and started with ten years of military duty. (Although nepotism was considered normal, so a lot just followed a general relative around as an aide.) That's ancient age, you know.
If using the expression "fucked up" a couple of times offends you so much, I wonder... can you even manage to watch a movie, what with all that cursing and stuff?
Well, yes, bingo. We need more scholarship and less... uninformed idealists trying to rewrite human history to fit their utopian ideals. The fact is, history isn't nice at all. And I don't see what's to gain by pretending that it was a rose-tinted time with honourable warriors, rosy-cheeked peasants, and prosperous healthy craftsmen, all shiny-happy collectivist and honest too.
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Even today the whole dope testing for 'performance enhancing' drugs thing makes sport a huge joke. When you cannot take a headache pill but can perform pissed out of your head it has rather become a performing dog show.
Maybe we should keep athletes in a designated building where we can monitor them 24/7 with specially trained enforcement staff to prevent them taking drugs. Oh sorry we already have that, its called prison and the place is rife with smack and charlie.
No, sorry, the drug creators will always be one step ahead of the authorities and almost all individual sports events will be won by cheats in future. The only thing keeping the whole charade going is the money made by the advertisers off the back of the activity. They have to keep the illusion that sport is drug free so they wont become tainted by the sordidness of the whole thing.
Maybe we should start allowing the use of some performance enhancing drugs (we already do that to some extent by allowing them to eat any kind of food - at least we don't specify the number of calories they are allowed to take on board each day unlike motor racing where you only get a certain amount of fuel) Certain drugs which have been shown to be relatively safe should be legalized and the trick would be for the athlete to find the right combination of the different things to get the best performance.
Hopefully if they are already doped up to the eyeballs there wont be any incentive to test some wonder drug made in a dirty sink by a backstreet criminal organization. I feel sorry for athletes and what the progress of our society has done to them. Sadly they have become history, like so many other things that I used to enjoy in my life before progress and the safety brigade banned and outlawed them.
This is all part of an insidious trend that is taking away most of the fun in life. I hope to be dead before the safety lobby enforce computer controlled vehicles. I'm betting that some of you reading this, will one day, remember fondly your youth where you were allowed to drive a car yourself.
Athletics is history, move on folks, nothing to see here.
Professional sports is the cause (Score:3, Insightful)
The solution is simple: Kill professional sports, or allow doping. Since doping is harmful to the athletes on the long term, we should kill professional sports.
Disclaimer: I think professional sports is a travesty. Grow the hell up, nobody should make their livelihood doing unproductive play. (No, standup comedians do not fall under this category, neither to artists. The arts as a whole contribute positively to society, while watching sports is empty entertainment)
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stupid Scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
Which version of it ? A Japanese samurai following bushido and some cretin murdering his sister because she was raped are both being honorable, as far as themselves are concerned, but their behaviors aren't really compatible.
Re:Things will change. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sitting for 8 hours a day isn't conductive to continued health either, but I don't see anyone trying to make office work illegal.
Re:Human emotion? Heh. (Score:4, Insightful)
E.g., even in English if you wanted to say "true to one's word", there are words like "honest", "truthful", and the like. Very unambiguous words, those.
That ambiguity however, is part of what the English word "honour" _is_. It's not two (or more) distinct words or meanings, which just happen to be pronounced that way. It's something which includes more meanings as an integral part of what it is. And the focus tended to always be more on the "duty" aspect, than on the "honesty" aspect.
There's not much point in debating what "honour" meant before literacy or the middle ages, because, you know, English as a language didn't exist before that point. But if we're to trace its origins through French to Latin, it never was the equivalent of "honest". The French medieval society wasn't that different from the English one later, seeing that the English culture largely evolved from what the Norman conquerors brought over.
Or if we're going to equate to "honour" any foreign word that gets (mis)translated as "honour", you end up including some pretty warped concepts too, not just "heder". You end up including, for example, the concept of female virginity as an integral part of her father's honour, and in some cultures the duty of a father to _murder_ his own daughter if she lost her virginity outside of marriage. (Even via rape.)
Or you end up trying to shoehorn such concepts as the asian concept of "face" into "honour", although the former too actually consists of two different things that get lumped together when translated as "honour" or "face". Only in that case it's more like "respect" someone gets, and "authority" he has. And it's very possible to cause someone a loss of respect, without undermining his authority, and viceversa.
More interestingly, neither of the two has anything to do with honesty. Telling a lie is, in fact, an accepted and _expected_ way to save "face" in either of the two senses. Being unable to achieve something, and admitting it, would actually cause a loss of face, but telling a lie to cover your arse does not.
So, there you go, a foreign couple of words that get translated sometimes as "honour" and really have nothing to do with being honest.
Re:Human emotion? Heh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Terrible things have happened in the name of honor because it is egoistical in nature, and egos make people blind. Still: I am honorable by holding true to my word while others lie, or withstanding torture in jail so my army's secrets remain secrets. I am honorable when I refuse bribery and do "good" and forbid "evil" even when I know many will not follow that creed. I am honorable in the battlefield and the science lab and in both cases my face ends up on postage stamps, because society will rever those that further it's survival no matter how, particularly when that involves a terrible sacrifice by the individual themselves. That is all it is: an egoistic reward of recognition by society of an individual's efforts, in light of the rules that society puts down.
All the things you mentioned are not problems with "honor" itself, just perversions of the meaning in certain periods of time in a particular society, or even unrelated hypocrisy. For example:
Summary: human egos and human greed can and will play on every other psychological nuance evolution has induced into our reasoning and feelings, but they do not have to be in control. In today's civilized/industrialized society, we can be honorable without being brainwashed, and we can enjoy the fact that we know the difference.
Re:Human emotion? Heh. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm calling out the people who actually committed those atrocities, not their descendants. And trust me, I'll be the first to call out the various atrocities committed by Germans too, all the way to the crusades.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. That's all I'm saying. Learn from your ancestors' mistakes, or you might live to repeat them, and sometimes in the name of the same rationalizations.
On the other hand, I see no point in blaming anyone for what their great-great-great-[...]-great-grandfather did, 600 years ago. People are responsible for their own mistakes and decisions -- including that to fall for a pretty rationalization -- but not for what someone else did, in a whole other time and place.
So, well, the same goes for your guilt trip attempt. Nice try, but I'm sure you can do better. I'll take responsibility for what _I_ have done, or even could have prevented, not for stuff that happened before I was even an embryo.
If nothing else, if we all started shutting up for fear of bringing up what our respective nation did at various points, there would be noone left to talk about history at all. Germany is pretty obvious, but everyone has their own atrocities in their nation's history. Italians in Ethiopia, the Americans against their own natives, China has a fine history of them going all the way to antiquity, Spain in America, Turkey has the legacy of what the Ottoman Empire did to the Armenians, etc. Heck, even the now so peaceful and sociable Scandinavians gave us the Viking invasions, and later... well, look up the Swedish Drink someday, but preferably not on a full stomach. The Czechs had the Hussite wars, and let's just say that the Hussites were interested more in inflicting revenge than conquest or anything else, and quickly gained a reputation of arsonists and murderers. And so on.
So, heh, by all means, bring it all out. Learn thy history, or it might bite you or your children in the arse. Hard.