Even before the current 2016 Olympic Games commenced there were scandals and controversy surrounding the use, by some competitors and some entire teams, of performance enhancing substances.
As technology advances it seems unlikely that that it will ever be possible to eliminate such substances and there is even evidence that the very early Olympic competitors used various substances to give them an advantage.
In this week's poll we hear again from Oxford professor, Julian Savulescu- this time on drugs in sport.
Have a read and see what you think- have we lost the race to stop drugs in sport?
Here he writes in the Australian media site The Age:
'Attempts to eliminate drugs from sport have patently failed. And will fail. The drive to perfect performance is irresistible. In the late 1990s, Sports Illustrated reported a survey by Dr Robert Goldman of past and aspiring Olympians. Goldman asked athletes if they would take an imaginary banned drug if it was guaranteed that they would not be caught and that they could win. The results were compelling 195 said they would take it and only three said they would not.
In 1997, Dutch physician Michel Karsten, who claims to have prescribed anabolic steroids to hundreds of worldclass athletes, told Sports Illustrated that very few athletes can win gold medals without taking drugs. 'If you are especially gifted, you may win once, but from my experience you can't continue to win without drugs. The field is just too filled with drug users.'
Drugs like Erythropoietin (EPO) and growth hormone occur naturally in the body. As technology advances, drugs have become harder to detect because they mimic natural processes. In a few years, many will be undetectable. The goal of 'cleaning' up sport is hopeless. And further down the track the spectre of genetic enhancement looms dark and large.
So is cheating here to stay? Drugs are against the rules, but we can redefine the rules of sport. If we made drugs legal and freely available, there would be no cheating. But would that be against the 'spirit of sport'?
Far from being against the spirit of sport, biological manipulation embodies the human spirit - the capacity to change ourselves on the basis of reason and judgement.
Taking drugs would make sport less of a genetic lottery. Winners would be those with a combination of the genetic potential, training, psychology and judgement with performance enhanced by drugs the result of creativity and choice. Unfair?
Sport discriminates against the genetically unfit.'
Savulescu discusses several examples where individuals have specific physical traits that give them an advantage – some have unusually high red blood cell counts. He talks of one competitor who had previously had his spleen removed following an accident. This resulted in his body having a much higher red blood cell count- unfair? Others have big feet (handy for swimming) or can afford to train at high altitude – unfair?
Surely almost everything a world class althlete does to train can be labelled 'unnatural'. Body shapes change, natural substances and environmental factors are optimised.. Where is the logical divide between natural and unnatural, and legal and illegal?
Savulescu continues: 'Should there be any limits to drugs in sport? Yes, the one limit is safety. We do not want an Olympics in which people die before, during or after competition.
We should permit drugs that are safe, and continue to ban and monitor drugs that are unsafe. This would be fairer in another way: provided a drug is safe, it is unfair to the honest athletes that they have to miss out on an advantage that the cheaters enjoy. Taking EPO up to the safe level, say 50 per cent, is not a problem. This allows athletes to correct for natural inequality.
We have two choices: to vainly try to turn the clock back, or to rethink who we are and what sport is, and to make a new 21st-century Olympics. Not a super-Olympics but a more human Olympics. Our crusade against drugs in sport has failed. Rather than fearing drugs in sport, we should embrace them. Performance enhancement is not against the spirit of sport; it is the spirit of sport. To choose to be better is to be human.'
Read the article in full here: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/02/1091432108050.html
With so many legal and illegal performance enhancers available would it be more fair to relax doping controls?
Is a level playing field needed?
Keep the tight controls or allow everyone to compete as equals?
As we saw in last week's poll, Savulescu has very strong views on many topics - what do you think of his views on this one?
Great to see some of you engaging with others. This week see if you can comment on one other person's post and if someone adds a comment to your post try to respond to keep the discussion going.
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