Malcolm Gladwell has read Epstein's book - wonders why dopers are condemned for trying to overcome genetic disadvantages

The reason he uses Tommy John is this, pitchers can throw harder without fear of blowing out their arms. When the do blow out their arms they just get TJ surgery and can now throw AT LEAST as hard without fear of re-injury as the new ligament is un-naturally strong as it was intended for other parts of the body where higher forces caused its stronger development.

There are issues of safety, cost, and ethics.

PEDs carry significant health risks. The naysayers deny this and they are wrong [I am a physician and see patients with problems from PEDs.] I would prefer to have participation in sport not require those risks to compete successfully.

Tommy John surgery is to correct an injury and is irrelevant to this argument. Gladwell's argument is specious.

Cost: not everyone can afford these drugs. Saying that only a few win the genetic lottery for talent is irrelevant. Sport should have as level a playing field as possible.

Using EPO to treat anemia is ethical [though not always medically indicated due to side-effects]. Using EPO to cause supra-physiologic hemoglobin levels is unethical. No responsible physician would prescribe this.

As an aside, Gamera wrote:

"We want to see the most gifted (mentally, but especially physically) athlete win."

I for one like to see the plodders overcome the more talented, especially as I was on the low end of the talent scale for speed. I always enjoyed beating the more gifted.

Many of the posts on here are refuting what Gladwell has to say. If most of you were familiar with any of the other topics that Gladwell writes on, as much as you are with PED use/misuse, you'd feel the same way about the rest of the stuff he writes too.

vonderlasa wrote:Using EPO to treat anemia is ethical [though not always medically indicated due to side-effects]. Using EPO to cause supra-physiologic hemoglobin levels is unethical. No responsible physician would prescribe this.

Which is an important point. At least in the US, many PEDs are either (1) illegal or (2) if legal, would not be prescribed by an ethical physician for performance enhancement.

Eliminating restrictions on PEDs would require athletes who are competitive to (1) break US laws to take some PEDs or go to countries where those PEDs are legal, or (2) find an unethical physician who would prescribe them contrary to any sound medical practice. Look for example at steroid use by bodybuilders where they frequently import illegal steroids or find shady people to prescribe steroids in an inappropriate way. Gladwell's "solution" just creates a new set of problems that are no better than the current problems with PED restrictions.

Tommy John surgery can result in increased velocity over the healthy arm, pre-injury.

Life is not fair. Some people are smart, others are dumb. Some people are tall, others are short. Some are strong, others weak. It is about survival of the fittest, and if you just don't have the physiological and psychological to succeed, compensating through PED's shouldn't be the answer.

This would say a law student that passes the bar on his own with brains and hard work should be held at the same standard as another student cheating and passing the bar. Ridiculous.

Let's say PED's were legal, the less talented athlete would receive performance based gains to a current elite status, yes. But, the athlete which already had talent would just take the same PED's and again beat out those not made like him.

The competition would end with the same result, with the big elite names on top of the sub-elite athletes. So why risk future medical conditions through doping if it still would benefit those made for that sport.

"For one, the latter is an unbelievable flimsy argument. There is little statistical correlation between Tommy John surgery and performance enhancement, In reading his piece, you might think the original Tommy John had a miraculous career BECAUSE of his surgery. If this were true and the correlation between TJ surgery and performance enhancement was this profound, you'd have healthy athletes lining up to get TJ surgery every day. But how often has a healthy pitcher decided to sit out a year and get TJ surgery to enhance his Win-Loss performance? Has this EVER happened?

It's insane to me that Gladwell continually fails to emphasize and recognize that HGH, Testosterone, Insulin, EPO are all NATURALLY occurring hormones and that the combination of these hormones + height, weight, slow/fast twitch, will power, determination etc is PRECISELY what creates "talent" in humans. There is no good reason why "one man is allowed to have lots of red blood cells and another man is not" other than that is the luck of the draw. Some of us may be "very lucky" genetically, but that's exactly why we have sports - to show off the greatness of NATURAL human talent. Not everyone can do great things athletically. We watch sports because athletes are doing exceedingly difficult things that most of could never do. Having sympathy for Lance or arguing for "leveling" the playing field through chemical PED because some of us aren't "very lucky" undermines the entire premise of sports."

For all of you who don't understand the point that Gladwell is trying to make, I will explain. Tommy John's tendon was not naturally strong enough to allow him to pitch at the level that the rest of his body was capable of. It wore out. This means that one of the natural "gifts" that is required for a pitcher to pitch well, in Tommy John's case, the resiliency of that tendon to wear, he lacked. So, they replaced the tendon with an exogenous one that allowed him to become a fantastic pitcher. The difference between Tommy John and a great pitcher who did not have any type of surgery is the same difference as Lance Armstrong and Eero Mantyranta. If they had competed against each other (I know that they're different eras as well as sports), Lance did not have the same naturally occurring levels of red blood cells that Eero did, thus limiting his ability to compete at that level. So, what's the difference in Lance doping to achieve similar levels of red blood cells as Eero and Tommy John obtaining another tendon to be able to achieve pitching greatness? (I'm not saying I agree with him, just an explanation).

New research shows that doped up Tour de France riders live longer than the average guy:

"We observed a substantially and significantly lower mortality in participants in the Tour de France, compared with the general male population."

http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/08/28/eurheartj.eht347.abstract

Of course Mantyranta doped also...

Lidgely wrote:

For those who say there is already PED use - which is true - that doesn't mean that we would be at the same point with unrestricted PED use. It's like saying that there is pervasive speeding on the highways, therefore it would make no difference if we eliminated speed limits.

Even if PED restrictions are not perfect, they at least limit the amount of doping and give clean athletes some chance of competing. Unrestricted doping would result in a complete freak show where people would destroy themselves to get short term success. Plenty of runners would ignore the risk of, for example, death from turning their blood to sludge, just to have one successful season. PED restrictions at least keep the sport from those extremes.

You make an excellent point but the half-assed punishments for doping at present have created a scenario where we really have no idea who is doping and who is clean. We have no idea how prevalent doping is at the highest levels. How many competitors in the 100m at the London Olympics were clean vs dirty? The 1500m? We can only guess.

If we are going to pursue the ideal then we have to have much harsher penalties for those caught to counter the enormous financial incentives to enhance performance by any means necessary. Anyone caught doping should face a lifetime ban and the prospect of financial ruin. Samples need to be stored and rules applied retroactively as new tests come out to detect banned substances. Under that scenario the problem becomes minimizing false positive testing errors because of the obvious horrific ramifications of false accusation. But it represents the only legitimate hope for clean sport.

reely stupid wrote:

Of course Mantyranta doped also...

Yep. Busted for amphetamine. He also used some hormones that were legal at the time.

So, what's the difference in Lance doping to achieve similar levels of red blood cells as Eero and Tommy John obtaining another tendon to be able to achieve pitching greatness? (I'm not saying I agree with him, just an explanation).

Waco Taco wrote:

Sports are meant to showcase natural ability, not how much you can increase your performance using drugs.

So should you then ban athletes who have been undergoing any form of organised athletic training? Sports right now may only be showcasing the athletes who have done the best or most training, not those with the most natural ability. And besides different athletes could respond differently to training which further complicates discerning those with the most "natural ability".

Crime and Punishment wrote:

If we are going to pursue the ideal then we have to have much harsher penalties for those caught to counter the enormous financial incentives. Anyone caught doping should face a lifetime ban and the prospect of financial ruin. Samples need to be stored and rules applied retroactively as new tests come out to detect banned substances.

What are the enormous financial incentives? Only a handful of runners make any significant money. These elites submit to an onerous and intrusive testing regime that is not perfect but with the bio-passport method captures most violations. If this approach had been applied to the Tour de France, the EPOdemic could not have happened.

People caught actually doping--as opposed to misusing over-the-counter pills--already face what amounts to a lifetime ban from a sport where performance deteriorates rapidly with age.

Samples are already often stored and rules applied retroactively as Lance discovered and others must now expect.

It is astonishing how contributors to this board imagine that many people are willing to incur the risks to health and reputation, the hassles of acquiring pills and injections, the legal entanglements, and even criminal penalties of drug use, even in the cases--mostly hormones to masculinize females--where "drugs" significantly enhance performance.

You probably think that Usain Bolt is clean. I don't. You probably think that Mahkloufi is clean. I don't. Can I provide any hard evidence? No, but for the history of cheaters being able to stay ahead of the game.

What are the financial incentives? Even after being caught and villified Lance remains considerably better off than if he had been a middle of the pack rider his whole career. Same could be said for Justin Gatlin or Tyson Gay. PEDs can make the difference between performance at a "minor league" level and success at the highest levels of sport. Of course they come with huge risks to health, but psychological studies have suggested that Olympic-level athletes would willingly risk shortening their lives considerably in exchange for a gold medal.

Crime and Punishment wrote:

You probably think that Mahkloufi is clean.

I don't know anyone who thinks that.

Crime and Punishment wrote:

If we are going to pursue the ideal then we have to have much harsher penalties for those caught to counter the enormous financial incentives to enhance performance by any means necessary. Anyone caught doping should face a lifetime ban and the prospect of financial ruin.

Applying heavy-handed sanctions may make people think "I will just not get caught". And how fair would it be to ruin someone for cheating? Why not burn their house and kill their children too, to create a strong disincentive?

If one feels the only way he can make it in the sport is by doping, there is not much that can be done. What is needed is bullet proof testing, so that people know they cannot get through the net, and no one else can either. Easier said than done.

That's the point! The only reason why doping should be banned...

is that it i unhealthy!

Otherwise it should be legal.

Have you considered that Malcolm Gladwell might be playing the part of devils advocate? His argument is thus:

Some people are winning the genetic lottery, and thus have an advantage in sport over others.

Sport is supposed to be a level playing field.

Thus, using PED's removes the advantage of genetics and creates a more balanced playing field.

I'm not saying I agree with his line of thinking - but if you look at some of the classic examples of doping - Ben Johnson, Lance Armstrong etc., they all beat everyone else of their era, DESPITE the fact that their competitors were on drugs as well. You could make the argument therefore, that the best athlete won. Or the best chemist. But I digress...