An Olympic Games For Enhanced Athletes? 245
ananyo writes "With the Olympics due to kick off on 27 July in London, Nature has taken a look at how far science would be able to push human athletic abilities if all restrictions on doping were lifted. The article mentions anabolic steroids (up to 38% increase in strength), IGF-1 (4% increase in sprinting capacity), EPO/blood doping (34% increase in stamina), gene doping and various drugs and supplements, as well as more 'extreme' measures such as surgery and prosthesis. Hugh Herr, a biomechanical engineer at MIT, says performance-enhancing technologies will one day demand an Olympics all their own. But is that time already upon us?"
Prior Art (Score:4, Informative)
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The rest of us idiots can watch normal people play sports. We wont have to hear about who did or didn't fail their drug tests anymore.
Keep those juiced-up losers away I am tired of hearing their names tossed around in the world of real sports.
Re:Prior Art (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of us idiots can watch normal people play sports.
Normal? You consider Shaquille O'Niel or Babe Ruth to be "normal"? I guess you'ld consider Einstein normal as well? Hell, I wouldn't even consider myself as "normal".
Why is it OK for a baseball player with 20/20 vision to have LASIK surgery to improve his eyesight to above normal so he can hit more fast balls and make more home runs but not OK for him to take steroids to make his strength above normal to hit more home runs? I just don't see the difference.
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There's that tawdry "level playing field" thing. Over the years, I've gone from not quite extreme far sightedness to vision that will pass the test at the DMV without glasses or contacts. Lucky, I guess. My brother needed surgery to correct his. Now he can see and above "normal".
But he doesn't throw a ball with his eyes.
I think you're setting the world up for Roid Ragers. Genetics, practice, combinations of motor control, physique, even yoga can make a difference. When you start adding in drugs, you won't g
Re:Prior Art (Score:4, Funny)
When you start adding in drugs, you won't get any ceilings, no responsible use. Once people start bulking up, they often don't stop.
Yes, here [youtube.com] is a very good example of someone who started out as a skinny teenager then let the "bulking up" get *way* out of control...
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There's that tawdry "level playing field" thing.
. . .
I think you're setting the world up for Roid Ragers. Genetics, practice, combinations of motor control, physique, even yoga can make a difference. When you start adding in drugs, you won't get any ceilings, no responsible use. Once people start bulking up, they often don't stop.
The problem is that there never really was a level playing field. Without enhancing things chemically, genes dictate potential, effort dictates how much of that potential is realized, environment dictates how much effort can be invested, and luck determines if one gets discovered, not to mention not having a horrible accident happen to them that strips ability or potential.
People seem to have these sort of "superiority guilt complexes" where they want to make things equal and level when, in reality, that's
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Why is it OK for a baseball player with 20/20 vision to have LASIK surgery to improve his eyesight to above normal so he can hit more fast balls and make more home runs but not OK for him to take steroids to make his strength above normal to hit more home runs? I just don't see the difference.
Drugs are bad, mkay
Re:Prior Art (Score:4, Informative)
We wont have to hear about who did or didn't fail their drug tests anymore.
It would not work like that. You would still have people trying to win the "enhancement restricted" events with enhancements because it might be easier for them that way than competing against or the other drugged/modded competitors in the "anything goes" variants.
Re:Prior Art (Score:5, Insightful)
Mad Magazine had this a long time ago. Pretty funny.
You will be modded funny, but I would mod you insightful.
Beside prior art, you may also look at other capital and publicity intensive spectacle sports, like Formula 1. You would have a few well funded stables, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer; and commentators would speculate non-stop whether which athlete is going to be recruited in which stable. Newspapers would delight in the gore of overdoses, deaths and bio-mechanical accidents of all kinds. Truly dystopian and I hope never to see pharmaceuticals get their way with such a monstrosity. It takes a mobster mentality to think of such a thing, even half seriously.
Re:Prior Art (Score:5, Funny)
Olympic-games-for-enhanced-athletes aka "Tour de France".
Bad Car Analogy (Score:2)
Like "unlimited" racing - nobody will care (take on Stinger missiles in the 1/4 mile, anyone?)
The auto racing that is popular is all rule bound, winning isn't about building the fastest car, it's about building and driving the fastest car within the rules.
All Drug Olympics (Score:2)
I can't watch this at work, but is this the "All Drugs Olympics"? Where the weightlifter's arms fall off while going for a world record?
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Re:All Drug Olympics (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a funny cartoon, but not funny when you look at the actual athletes. These people destroy their bodies pushing themselves to the limit. Even in ice skating which looks like a nice "easy" sport, people tear-up their knees or hips, and have permanent pain for the rest of their lives. In running Florence Griffith Joyner pushed herself so hard, she died before age 40. She had been training for the next olympics.
Let's NOT have an olympics where athletes use steroids and other enhancements to kill themselves prematurely.
Re:All Drug Olympics (Score:4, Insightful)
Athletes of all stripes push their bodies to the limits, whether they're doping or not. That's sort of the point. Anything less than "to the limits" is considered half-assing it. Of course, they used to have football coaches that wouldn't let their boys drink water on the sidelines, so maybe what "to the limits" means could use some refinement.
I don't know about you, but on the rare occasion that I bother to work out, if I don't ache the next day, I feel a little bit cheated.
Re:All Drug Olympics (Score:5, Insightful)
Why shouldn't one be allowed to choose what they do to their body?
As long as there is no coercion to the individual ("do this or we send you and your family to the rape pits") and it truly is that individual's choice what they do to their body, I don't really care what an athlete does to themselves.
Maybe put restrictions - no modifications allowed until after the age of 18 and then after that they can consent to whatever - so that children aren't being damaged any more than they already are by being pushed to hyper-competitiveness.
Now, I do feel bad for people who have wrecked their bodies in the name of sport, but by and large, it's their choice to do so. I work with an ex-football player who, at the ripe old age of 50, has severe arthiritis in knees, hips, elbows and shoulders, has had multiple back surgeries, and who, when it's cold and damp out basically needs Vicodin in order to function through the pain, but he has said he wouldn't have given up playing even if he knew just how bad he would feel now, and that it was worth it. I feel bad for him, but I'm not going to try and protect people from themselves as long as they're capable of making a relatively informed decision.
Re:All Drug Olympics (Score:5, Insightful)
So you would fully support blood sport where two gladiators willingly fight each other to the death?
There is a line where we should not cross, and I find allowing a "drug olympics" is crossing that line.
Re:All Drug Olympics (Score:4, Interesting)
Fights to the death were actually fairly rare in gladiatorial games because gladiators were so expensive to train that it would be wasteful.
That said, we already have things that are essentially bloodsport, but we pretend as if they aren't. What is boxing and MMA other than gladiatorial combat? Granted the purpose isn't to have people die, but it's certainly a risk, and long-term injury and debilitating brain damage is almost certain.
We also already have people doing incredibly unsafe things to their bodies in the form of training or drugs now, it's just that often times they pretend they aren't doing it. I would much rather have it be legal and in the open (and more closely supervised by medical pros) than illegal and hidden in the dark where we can't have any idea of what is going on. Making it legal would mean that people doing this would be more able to get adequate medical attention, would mean that more research could be done in the open about the long term effects, and would make it easier to inform the general public about what kinds of things people are doing (sacrifices they make) to excel.
There is no way we will ever stop people from using performance enhancements. I recognize that and think that, in a world where people will use those enhancements it's much better to have it in he open and supervised than the dark and unsupervised.
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No, she died as the result of a a congenital brain abnormality that made [her] subject to seizures [wikipedia.org].
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Cyborg battlebots gladiator arena 2000 (Score:2)
What for? (Score:3)
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Well for starters baseball was a hell of a lot more interesting when they were jacked up enough to blast the ball out of the park...
So just build smaller parks and you'll get the same effect.
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just follow the Yankees, between A-Rod, swisher, cano, granderson and jetter you are guaranteed at least one HR a game
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Re:What for? (Score:5, Informative)
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In a coversation with friends during the recent doping inquiry with Clemens, I proposed a split of MLB into enhanced and un-enhanced branches.
In the un-enhanced branch, every player rises to the top of their natural ability; if they catch you doping illegally, you would be banned from *both* branches, and never allowed to play professionally again.
In the enhanced branch, you could bat while wearing a test tube actively pumping neon-green ooze into your veins, and no rules would be broken, but that would be
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While that may be true for most of us when it comes to the absolutely peak performers it's more about how far you can push the human body.
And it would be interesting to see someone with the right genetics, training and "supplements" and what they could achieve.
Re:What for? (Score:5, Informative)
As an addendum, imagine the benefits if more effort was put into developing a safe and effective mystatin inhibitor/blocker.
Not only would it be useful for professional athletes and those suffering from muscular dystrophy, if it was safe it could also be used by "regular people". It probably wouldn't be a "wonder drug" to make everyone fit, not by a long shot, but it would help the average guy who can't quite find time to work out as often as he wants put on more muscle mass, it could help someone who's overweight store more energy as muscle rather than fat.
Obviously I'm speculating but there are definitely interesting applications once you look beyond "all changes to the human body that enhance performance are evil".
Re:What for? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the point of olympic/professional sports is making money via entertainment.
Not all drugs that increase performance will kill or even harm the user. I take a drug daily(prescribed by a doctor) that measurably improves the quality of my life and the length of it. It also improves my performance in some physical tests.
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No, the point of olympic/professional sports is making money via entertainment.
Definitely agree with you there.
Not all drugs that increase performance will kill or even harm the user. I take a drug daily(prescribed by a doctor) that measurably improves the quality of my life and the length of it. It also improves my performance in some physical tests.
When it comes to performance enhancement drugs for sports the possibility for misuse increases alarmingly and will in the medium to long term debilitate the user.
As for taking prescribed drugs that is fine although if possible it is not a good idea to prolong taking those drugs unless those drugs are vital to the continued health and well being of the person taking them. As an example my wife has glaucoma and has to take two different types of eye drops a day for life and
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My drug taking is in a similar boat to your wife. To discontinue taking it would destroy the quality and likely quantity of my life.
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What is the point to kill yourself with drugs and supplements?
Legacy, baby.
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Really?
Because I was getting the impression that the point of sports was to shift more Big Macs and pitchers of Coke, while a bunch of highly trained athletes were put to the test trying to best each other at slipping performance enhancers under the radar.
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Re:What for? (Score:4, Funny)
Sport is when you go out and do it, not when you watch in from behind that bucket of potato chips or popcorn. Well, at least in my world.
You seem to have wandered into the foreign territory of slashdot, where exercise is climbing the stairs from mom's basement to raid the fridge.
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What does that have to do with the Olympics?
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Well, then your definition of sports bears little to do with current competitive sporting events or the people that take part in them, which is kinda what TFA was about.
I don't disagree, by the way :)
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The point of sport is exercising your body for the fun and health benefits. What is the point to kill yourself with drugs and supplements?
Even in magical fairy-land where nobody is shooting god-knows-what in the locker room, that statement is basically nonsense at the pro level. A bit of amateur physical activity of some flavor or another? Sure, you might get a scrape or something; but it'll stave off the cardiac larditis.
High level athletics, though, tends to trash the players pretty badly in one or more ways depending on sport.
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The point of sport is exercising your body for the fun and health benefits.
That is true at the level amateurs do it. At the professional level fun is long gone and the health benefits are not so clear. Just look at Michael Phelps... to train for the 2008 Olympics he was training 5 or 6 hours a day and eating over 10000 calories a day. Or look at the pictures of Chinese 5 year old kids preparing to be gymnasts in three Olympiads. Fun isn't that their faces convey.
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Implants are there to kill people ? Really ? So i should not be allowed to compete in any markmanship sport because i had LASIK done years ago ?
Point being, there are obvious performance-enhancing drugs and implants with a sole purpose of
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We're talking about the Olympics. These athletes take it way too seriously, and a lot of them wreck their bodies in the process. Fun and health benefits aren't why anyone goes to the Olympics. It's all about pride.
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"The point of sport is exercising your body for the fun and health benefits."
That's what's called an "asserted conclusion".
If we are to judge by the MONEY flow, the point of "sport" is to ENTERTAIN the audience and make a profit.
I'd be fine with an "enhanced" category. As with automobile drag racing, don't run what you can't afford to blow up.
Re:Not your choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait. It isn't moral when the government says something, but it is moral when a human being is fed hormones and drugs so that the sponsors can peddle the next tennis shoe to a million voyeurs in front of all those TVs?
You have some morals you can be proud of.
Re:Not your choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Its their choice to:
A) Play their chosen sport professionally
B) Play in a league that allows it
C) Participate in taking those drugs/hormones
Re:Not your choice (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't nearly as simple as you imagine it to be. Organized sports are a show business that has to consistently deliver extraordinary performances in order to attract coach potatoes and sponsors. The people who get into sports are attracted by the promise of fame and money, but this only goes to very few lucky ones.
Unfortunately, all who try are young, immature and quite often unaware of the consequences of the drugs they are using and the real costs they face. Many are lead into all this druggery by the coaches, peer pressure, etc. By the time they get the experience and maturity to be able to make a good decision it is already too late.
I've lost a friend to this kind of "sport". Heart attack at 29. Very moral.
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Maybe if we stopped watching pro sports, the sponsors and the money would go away, and this sort of stuff would never happen.
Then sports could be something people do for fun, not a way to get into college (?) or a way to make a living (?!).
But as long as pro athletes are getting paid millions upon millions of dollars, I demand that they take on a proportionate level of risk, say at least roughly 100 times the risk that active duty deployed combat troops face (based on the wage ratio).
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Yeah, I think there are definitely good reasons to encourage restraint.
For one thing, even if we allow some things, it's important to ask "how far do we go?" What if we develop a procedure to allow someone to run even faster than is humanly possible, but it requires shaving off all unnecessary mass, removing genitals, removing limbs, and adding some kind of crazy prothesis? What if the results leave the person a monster, in constant pain, unable to lead a normal life, but able to run the 100 meter dash 3
On a related note... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Or, if we want it to stay an actual automobile, what about putting a dummy inside? If you get to the finish line with the dummy damaged, you're disqualified. Thus, we could have no risk to actual humans while still keeping the basic rules.
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Nothing prevents the unmanned cars to still be driven by humans. If aircraft can already be driven remotely, why cars wouldn't?
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Nothing prevents the unmanned cars to still be driven by humans. If aircraft can already be driven remotely, why cars wouldn't?
Professional race car drivers do not become professional race car drivers so they can sit at a console playing a video game.
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Only geeks would watch robot/RC F1, this has been considered a long time ago. There's also the issue of money, make it too expensive and there will be less competitors, recently F1 has been working to effectively cap costs for this reason, and that's why you see the "low budget" (by F1 standards LOL) teams coming back now.
Who would watch? (Score:2)
Some people would tune in to see the products that are being advertised. If the "Runalong 6000" leg prosthetic beats the "Leapfrog 200", I might be interested if I'm in the market for my own enhancement.
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an Olympics all their own? (Score:2)
Maybe not an Olympics, but competition with lower drug standard - almost guaranteed at some point ... like WWE, bodybuilding or MMA all have a niche
But just like Boxing still has a prestige in the world of MMA/UFC, the Olympics will always have a place. I see 2 scenarios:
1. we are probably better placed in drug testing than at any time in the last 40 years so we continue to go down that path
2. the drugs out-perform the testing and some events become farcical (eg 100m sprint is getting there!) whilst other e
Oh boy (Score:2)
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With the sheer number of books Asimov wrote on that theme I'd be shocked if that specific topic didn't come up at some point.
Limbo (Score:2)
Try "I Robot" by Isaac Asimov (1950). Some Science fiction writings dating back to the nineteenth century also covered robots however I am not sure they demanded their own Olympics, although some writers had them trying to take over the earth.
Precisely on the topic of technical enhancements for humans in sports is the novel "Limbo" by Bernard Wolfe from 1952. Well worth a read. It starts with small enhancements for small advantages in sport competitions. In the end of the novel, as far as I can recall, it was highly fashionable (even for couch potatoes) to replace every limb, and those who preferred to keep their bodies unchanged were so old-skool. I remember that it was quite disturbing when I read it.
I found the book in a drawer when they gave
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Sponsored by Pfizer (Score:5, Funny)
And then we won't have athletes representing countries any more, but drug companies.
"Well, GlaxoSmithKline are looking great, taking home four gold medals, two silvers and five bronzes so far. This is sure to push their stock price up substantially for the coming year."
Did not RTFA.
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Hey don't laugh that's basically how F1 works. That's probably exactly what would happen.
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as well as more 'extreme' measures such as surgery (Score:2)
as well as more 'extreme' measures such as surgery and prosthesis.
Id just bring a fucking motorbike to the race.
The olympics should promote sports (Score:2)
Freakshows with a lifespan of 30 years wouldn't be the best way to do that.
It will end up in one contest (Score:2)
No. never. (Score:2, Insightful)
The idea of athletic competition is to hone the mind and body to win. Yes, there are genetic aberrations, but this natural and normal.
But when you make the competition about the tech, there is no human element in the drama. The human does not even matter. Only the tech does.
Except for the fact that you are talking about horrible consequences for the human lab rat in the equation with any cutting edge biotech.
So you have:
1. no human drama. it's about the tech. race robots or cars or boats instead
2. destroyed
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I might agree with this conclusion, but I'm compelled to ask whether or not we still really live in a moral world, since the popular conception in industrialized societies these days seems to be to view ideas like "good" and "bad" as culturally subjective, rather than absolutes that exist for all human beings.
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in some societies, you sacrifice a goat for weddings, in others you break a wine glass
but murder is wrong in all societies
the point is: cultural relativity does not neutralize or surpass universal HUMAN values, cultural values are SECONDARY to universal human morality
the next valid question is to ask which is cultural and which is universal, and there are gray areas here. but the existence of those gray areas still does not nullify universal morality. for example, find me a society where cannibalism is acce
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Some societies look upon things that we accept as normal as abominable though.... such as homosexuality. I'm not bringing this example up to argue that homosexuality is or even might be wrong, I'm suggesting that it seems to me that morality is always very much based on culture and upbringing, rather than on any sort of universal morality.
As for the idea that there could be some sort of universal morality around ideas such as murder, that's not really valid either... since what one considers to be "mur
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no there is only a universal morality. because we're all human beings. i don't cross the rio grand or the straights of bosporus and suddenly magic happens and changes the parameters of human interaction. this is a baseline: human morality. nothing logically invalidates it or transgresses against it
homosexuality is universally ok. societies that consider it wrong are engaging in violating the human rights of the individual. why are you so spineless about this? make the logic and reason on the question of con
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There's a lot of misunderstanding pertaining to the phrase 'cultural relativism' floating about. It's original intent was very specific and had nothing to do with 'moral relativism' either.
A brief intro read on the subject, worth a glance as it leads to other interesting readings. You can indeed arrive at a 'universal' sense of morals through logical processes. However this does not mean that humanity will keel over and accept it. (Slightly off topic even the US has yet to ratify certain wartime treaties
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as long as we are all human beings, only one universal morality applies. everything else is inertia
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so, are you suggesting that immorality is acceptable somewhere due to some arbitrary considerations?
otherwise you agree with me
consider a culture. call it culture A. is culture A unyeilding? is it unmoving? is it unquestionable? is it perfect?
no?
then you agree with me
Don't call this "sport" (Score:4, Insightful)
Olympia has long since ceased to be a sports event. This is entertainment delivered by modern day gladiators who sacrifice health and life in a quest for money and immoratility through fame.....
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This is entertainment delivered by modern day gladiators who sacrifice health and life in a quest for money and immortality through fame.....
I'm confused... how does that differ from every other "sport", again?
A matter of time (Score:2, Funny)
I can't wait for the one man three legged race.
This is why. Arms race indeed. (Score:3)
As Bob Page says, "their... ethical inflexibility has allowed us to make progress in areas they refuse to consider." (a quote from the opening of Deus Ex that has stayed with me over the years). As a side note, the military has been using performance-enhancing drugs like dextroamphetamine for decades so in a way there is nothing new here. When it comes down to the crunch, humans will use any enhancement they can get their hands on. Competition driving technological development.
When we have the technology, we've the desire to test it out, see what it can do, see what its effects are. From a purely practical standpoint this would be the driving reason -why-. Much like how in racing, it isn't just skill, it's also the engineering that is being tested.
This may sound strangely immoral, and I agree the morals can be debated, but I don't think the answers will turn out to be as simple as 'doping is always wrong' (queue controversial studies about caffeine and athleticism) or alternately 'well the athletes are consenting' (when you factor in potential societal pressures, long term side effects and other things--for example fighting in hockey is always under debate, as it is an expectation from some of the fans, but is over time being documented as causing a lot of harm both physically and psychologically to the players, aka the hockey suicides over the past couple years).
I lift things up (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAXo3Wr_nYU [youtube.com]
So? (Score:3, Interesting)
Top-level elite athletes are already genetic outliers who have also benefitted from good fortune in early training and nutrition and, typically, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of targetted training.
It's not just a matter of will power or clever training schedules. It matters not how strong be my willpower, or how dedicated my training: I will never be an olympic-class athlete.
Bring on the drugs, and the treatments. It would make elite sport more equitable, and further, the medical risks taken by those with the burning desire to compete at any cost will allow the greater majority of people to benefit from enhancements with more safety.
The Olympics? (Score:2)
We will know when the time is right... (Score:2)
Just maintain the status quo until JC Denton infiltrates the WADA HQ and, with superhuman precision, assassinates the entire Executive Committee and Foundation Board. At that point, we'll know that it's time to hand the Paralympic Games over to the unaugmented humans and leave the serious competition to the cyborgs....
I'll just leave this here (Score:2)
Don't Forget What The Olympics is Actually About (Score:2)
The Olympics is about making money. If letting artificially enhanced athletes on the field will sell more coca-cola and big macs, it will eventually be allowed.
Somebody patent it! (Score:2)
"A novel approach to enhancing athletic performance in an officially sanctioned, augmentation supported sporting event"
Well, isn't that special? (Score:2)
One day? I'm watching it right now (Score:3)
The 2012 Tour de France
Stock vs Open (Score:3)
There are rules for different classes of racers (athletes). Stock is very strictly controlled where as Open allows for major modification.
The "professional" sports are really "professional athletic entertainment". Conversely the Olympics are the best "amateurs" - at least until the 1990s when they opened the sports up to the "Dream Team" professionals.
The Olympics can pretend all day long that they are serious about drug enhanced performance, but if they want to prove it then get ride of the professionals. Take away the money and you're left with those fighting for the podium, which there will continue to be cheaters, but at least you're getting rid of those who are making a living off of cheating.
These pros have their venues - and those who want to compete in a clean environment should have the Olympics.
-CF
A step in the wrong direction (Score:3)
It's already the case that one has to train roughly 7 days a week, 10+ hours per day for about 10 or more years to even be able to ENTER the Olympics, never mind winning a gold medal. The suggestion that a person might one day have to have surgery, drug injections, and so on just to compete in an international games festival is sickening to me. Yes, some Olympic athletes already do this--probably because they're short-sighted, excessively "driven," and/or stupid. That still doesn't make it "right."
I realize that it's technologically interesting (and hence /. news), but I REALLY hope this never truly comes to pass. Sports just aren't worth such abuse to a person's body (or the gajillions of dollars spent on the Olympics, for that matter...but that's another topic). I have trouble justifying such human abuses as the Games already cause to young athletes (resulting in such things as sterility in women, irregular bone growth, joint problems later in life, etc.). Why on Earth would we want to add to that?
I guess this is where we'll see how obsessed with technology and sports the world really is...
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Unless they want to die at 35 of a cancer or something, I wouldn't advise it.
One of the reason those kind of things are banned is because they are dangerous
But its for the glory! And quite a few people on here have said that they would take 1 way rides to Mars for the glory of it, no matter what the risk.
There are always going to be people who will prioritize "glory" over anything else. In fact Olympic athletes are already doing that as a 9-5 job is a hell of a lot east to do than olympic training.
Re:Health issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless they want to die at 35 of a cancer or something, I wouldn't advise it. One of the reason those kind of things are banned is because they are dangerous
On the other hand, the present regulatory state(where even using the ones that are legal by prescription can get you tossed right out of the sport) has unfortunate side effects of its own: since development of assays for novel drugs tends to lag behind, but not too far behind, development of novel drugs, there is a strong incentive for people to move away from drugs with the most testing and data available and toward novel ones with poorly characterized risks, to avoid being caught. Also, because the doping is largely clandestine, society at large is denied a valuable source of information about the effects and risks of performance enhancing drugs.
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Unless they want to die at 35 of a cancer or something, I wouldn't advise it. One of the reason those kind of things are banned is because they are dangerous
Hey, we'll have willing participants who understand and disregard the risks. Sounds like a great research study with no ethical problems, if you ask me.
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He is a freak of nature on his own - possibly the best cyclist ever born.
And smart. His TDF wins were very calculated. He didn't race regularly except to prepare for the Tour. He didn't attempt to win every stage, just conserved his energy for most of the month and took the 1-3 stages (he had to - if he had to). So he would crank out great Time Trials putting him up 2-3 minutes, and then tuck into the peloton and let his team keep him safe.
However the fact that the freak of natu