If everyone on the elite/professional circuit was allowed to do PEDs would you be OK with it? I understand it's illegal (like real world, not IAAF) but if it is about entertainment, don't you want them performing to the very peak? I understand wanting to keep records "pure" but records are meant to be broken and it appears a lot of people here already believe a lot of WR are already held by dopers.
"Discus"
Yes I think we should although I think we should also have a separate dope-free category (which would just have the same problem)
Most doping isn't dangerous and could be supervised
It would enhance human performance
It would be based on who can afford better stuff, but sport is already like that
It would still be a competition
Legalizeit
2133 wrote:
Yes I think we should although I think we should also have a separate dope-free category (which would just have the same problem)
Most doping isn't dangerous and could be supervised
It would enhance human performance
It would be based on who can afford better stuff, but sport is already like that
It would still be a competition
What are the long term health effects?
It is sort of like the argument to build the Keystone pipeline. Canada is going to drill and get their oil to market anyway. So you may as well build it.
There's definitely a whole lot of good reasons why doping should remain illegal. Here's some potential one's off the top of my head:
1. Unsustainability. If you don't draw the line somewhere, the win-at-all-costs type of person will do whatever it takes to beat his competitor, which in a doping world necessarily means doping more than your competitor. The natural body has built in safety mechanisms to prevent catastrophic failure (eg you'll pass out before you can run yourself to death), but there's no such safety once drugs get involved and the body is artificially pushed to do beyond what it is adapted for. Athletics would devolve into a contest of how many drugs one can do before irreparable injury or death.
2. Legal doping would raise the question of when it is ok to start. College? High school? Middle school? PED's acting on your endocrine system are going to have serious developmental consequences that will only be more severe the younger you start. But if everyone else is doing it you won't have a choice if you want to run with the best, right?
3. Competition will become inaccessible to all but the most wealthy and privileged. It will be impossible to participate independently from the Nike's or Putin-led governments of the world.
4. This point is more philosophical, but IMO the most important. Sport will ultimately no longer be a contest to see who is the best athlete (ie the right combination of talent, dedication, passion, willpower) it will be a competition to see who is the best doper. Which means whoever is the wealthiest with the best technology wins instead of who works the hardest. We already live in a pharmaceutical culture that demands instant gratification and easy fixes, but sport is one of the last remnants of a way of life that rewards practice and patience. Opening the doors to doping would destroy that in favor of the "fix it with a pill" mentality. To me what makes running thrilling is that it's sort of a poetic reflection of raw struggle in the human experience. Once doping is the thing fueling that performance what have you got left? Something that IMO is not much more interesting than watching robots scoot around a track.
If you want entertainment go watch WWE or an action movie or something. As for me, I want to experience something real and something ultimately human.
+1
Great post.
Agree with the pros and cons of the argument because:
Pro: If people were honest about their doping there might be a medical benefit for others. Because athletes can't be honest and open about their doping we can't sort out the doping that is bad medicine versus the doping that could be considered good medicine.
Con: Dopers that can't beat other dopers would try to race in the clean category to win. We would still have to test the clean category and try to catch people.
Alternative universe: One race where men, women, disabled, dopers, transgenders, etc. compete together for scholarships, sponsors, bathrooms and Olympic medals. If we can't be honest about performance let's at least reduce racing to just one race to save some time.
People are constantly advocating for legal drugs in sport. They should all read this post:
Skips Arm Day wrote:
There's definitely a whole lot of good reasons why doping should remain illegal. Here's some potential one's off the top of my head:
1. Unsustainability. If you don't draw the line somewhere, the win-at-all-costs type of person will do whatever it takes to beat his competitor, which in a doping world necessarily means doping more than your competitor. The natural body has built in safety mechanisms to prevent catastrophic failure (eg you'll pass out before you can run yourself to death), but there's no such safety once drugs get involved and the body is artificially pushed to do beyond what it is adapted for. Athletics would devolve into a contest of how many drugs one can do before irreparable injury or death.
2. Legal doping would raise the question of when it is ok to start. College? High school? Middle school? PED's acting on your endocrine system are going to have serious developmental consequences that will only be more severe the younger you start. But if everyone else is doing it you won't have a choice if you want to run with the best, right?
3. Competition will become inaccessible to all but the most wealthy and privileged. It will be impossible to participate independently from the Nike's or Putin-led governments of the world.
4. This point is more philosophical, but IMO the most important. Sport will ultimately no longer be a contest to see who is the best athlete (ie the right combination of talent, dedication, passion, willpower) it will be a competition to see who is the best doper. Which means whoever is the wealthiest with the best technology wins instead of who works the hardest. We already live in a pharmaceutical culture that demands instant gratification and easy fixes, but sport is one of the last remnants of a way of life that rewards practice and patience. Opening the doors to doping would destroy that in favor of the "fix it with a pill" mentality. To me what makes running thrilling is that it's sort of a poetic reflection of raw struggle in the human experience. Once doping is the thing fueling that performance what have you got left? Something that IMO is not much more interesting than watching robots scoot around a track.
If you want entertainment go watch WWE or an action movie or something. As for me, I want to experience something real and something ultimately human.
Not all drugs are harmful. Not all drugs are expensive.
For example, caffeine helps performance is not harmful and is not expensive.
Blah Blah Blah wrote:
Not all drugs are harmful. Not all drugs are expensive.
For example, caffeine helps performance is not harmful and is not expensive.
True enough, but cost is often tied to how effective a drug is. Aspirin is cheap, Vicodin is expensive. If PED's are ever made legal, inexpensive stimulants and steroids will be useless. Gene doping, EPO's, and something that is in some pharmaceutical lab trial we have never heard of will yield ever higher performance increases. It will be an arms race fueled by money. It will not be who trains best or has the most guts but who has the best lab to create the perfectly optimized human athlete.
I'm not the first to make this point, but legalizing PEDs would effectively end women's sports by forcing female competitors to reach male levels (or higher) of testosterone and do so earlier and earlier in their developement. This spiral of forcing ever more complete hormonal masculinization on female athletes is unsustainable (Skips Arm Day's first point).
The discussion shouldn't be between allowing unlimited use of PEDs and completely banning them because unlimited use clearly can't be allowed. A more realistic form of legalized doping would be a system where athletes are penalized for hormonal levels or other measures above/below certain limiting values. For example you would be allowed to try to raise your hematocric so longs as it stays below H_0 and you are allowed to take testosterone so long as your level down not exceed T_0 and so on.
Such a system doesn't fix Skips Arm Day's points 2-4 but at least it goes a long way toward #1, sustainability, because it at least ensures that the downward spiral stop somewhere.
bad_stats wrote:
A more realistic form of legalized doping would be a system where athletes are penalized for hormonal levels or other measures above/below certain limiting values.
That's what we have now. It's ridiculous you can take X amount of EPO because all it then does is it requires everyone at a minimum to take X amount while people seeking to gain an edge will take 2X and 3X of EPO. So all you've done is require that people take at least some of this controlled substance meant for cancer treatment and haven't taken away the motivation to go beyond legal levels and endanger their health.
skips arm day is making a mistake.
he should be on an anabolic (or several) and doing his curls.
otherwise, that's a fine post
I have long been opposed to legalizing doping. I am beginning to reconsider my stance. I am not at all to the point of thinking that is what we should do, but I am at least open to the argument in a way I have never been before.
I do disagree with at least one point made above. If drugs are legalized then steroids will absolutely be used. They are some of the most powerful performance enhancers made and are only currently limited because they are relatively easy to test for and detect. They are in many ways more powerful than many of the substances currently being used.
Jeff Wigand wrote:
bad_stats wrote:A more realistic form of legalized doping would be a system where athletes are penalized for hormonal levels or other measures above/below certain limiting values.
That's what we have now. It's ridiculous you can take X amount of EPO because all it then does is it requires everyone at a minimum to take X amount while people seeking to gain an edge will take 2X and 3X of EPO. So all you've done is require that people take at least some of this controlled substance meant for cancer treatment and haven't taken away the motivation to go beyond legal levels and endanger their health.
I'm not advocating for this "threshold" system by the way. I'm just throwing it out there as a more realistic counter option than "anything goes." I would point out though, that there is some benefit to health. If you set the threshold at X, maybe someone tries to get an advantage and go to X plus a little bit but their incentive to go way beyond is lowered assuming they are tested frequently enough to fear the penalty.
I agree that such a threshold system would essentially force all athletes to use PEDs to get up to the threshold. I don't like that either.... The current system may be the worst of both worlds, though, because PEDs are not allowed and we have thresholds in testing. Since testing for the drugs themselves is weak, you have the situation where an athlete may reasonably feel that have to take an illegal drug to reach the threshold--that the rules are in effect mandating illegal microdosing.
This might be the dumbest post of all time. Are you mentally retarded?
So if I want to be a pro runner I would have to decide between taking supplements that might kill me or not going pro?
I understand some are not back for you but you didnt say to let people use just those; you said make them all allowed.
You're making track and field sound like wrestling
The rules for a sport try to maximize over several different dimensions, which is impossible, so you have to make tradeoffs.
1. Fairness
2. Making the sport exciting
3. Safety of competitors
Legalizing PEDs could effect all three of these, but not necessarily positively.
1. It could promote fairness since currently some people with pro talent don't want to cheat. These people are called "sub-elites".
2. In promoting fairness, you might see tighter competition and new records.
3. Athletes would be in arms race to take more and more PEDs to stay ahead of the competition. No more having to microdose in order to pass the drug test. This could result in serious health consequences.
The rosiest scenario is that we could legalize PEDs while setting reasonable limits on the amount you can use. You have to think about the incentives. Currently the incentive is to take PEDs or basically be sub-elite. That's a powerful incentive to cheat. But if we legalized PEDs while setting limits, the incentives for cheating are much smaller for two reasons. (1) the people who don't cheat aren't as far behind as they used to be, and (2) the people who do cheat are the ones who are more aggressively pushing the point where the health consequences of PEDs come into play.
OTOH, we all know the study about how 99% of olympians would take the pill that would kill them in ten years but give them a gold medal. So it's very likely that the incentive is still strong enough to lead to widespread cheating.
Typical runner or sockpuppet wrote:
The rosiest scenario is that we could legalize PEDs while setting reasonable limits on the amount you can use. You have to think about the incentives. Currently the incentive is to take PEDs or basically be sub-elite. That's a powerful incentive to cheat. But if we legalized PEDs while setting limits, the incentives for cheating are much smaller for two reasons. (1) the people who don't cheat aren't as far behind as they used to be, and (2) the people who do cheat are the ones who are more aggressively pushing the point where the health consequences of PEDs come into play.
I assume that you'd set the PED limit in terms of measurable pysiological parameters (is there another way?). What's the argument then for allowing the PEDs at all? (I gave one but I'm curious where you are coming from.) Why not set the physiological limits and ban the drugs (i.e. the status quo)?