Why performance enhancing drugs should be allowed

The relaxation has done nothing to affect the spectacle, nature or definition of sport. It has just meant we don't have to waste time working out how much Coca-Cola an athlete has drunk. People still need to train to make the most of their drugs, then.

It doesn't help to look at sport as being a battle of wills if, as we've already seen, the natural limits of the human body are increasingly the reason for success. I could try all I want, but I will never make it as a professional gymnast because I'm just too tall and awkward. The same applies to many athletes now who are never going to be able to beat Jessica Ennis, no matter how much they try.

We as spectators push athletes to be the absolute best, and in the process create the culture where doping is needed to reach those heights. It increasingly feels difficult to reconcile the purity of asking athletes to do whatever it takes to win as long as that isn't going beyond an arbitrary definition of "natural".

Performance-enhancing drugs are that great leveler, that tool for athletes to bridge the unfair natural gap. Doping should only be banned when it is significantly harmful relative to the inherent risks of sport, or against the spirit of a particular sport.

For example, drugs to reduce tremor like beta blockers in archery or shooting are against the spirit of that sport as it is inherently a test of ability to control nerves. Drugs which removed fear in boxing would be against the spirit of boxing.

But blood doping up to a haematocrit [percentage of red blood cells in blood] of 50 percent is safe and not against the spirit of cycling. Miah also points out that there is a lot of legal doping going on already, such as altitude chambers, which recreate the experience of training in thinner air to give athletes a bigger oxygen capacity.

WADA approved such chambers in because they were felt to recreate a natural phenomenon. But then what's the difference between that and injecting someone with natural growth hormones, for instance? In general, the following classes of drugs are banned: Street drugs, stimulants, anabolic steroids, peptide hormones i.

For athletes who need a banned drug for legitimate medical reasons, the anti-doping programs offer a way to request a therapeutic use of exemption TUE so the athlete can use the drug.

The athlete must have a physician complete a TUE form that states the athlete needs the drug to treat their medical condition and that an alternative non-banned drug is not available or insufficiently treats their condition. It is important to note that even some over-the-counter OTC medications and supplements are either banned or contain banned additives or contaminants. WADA has banned pseudoephedrine i. There are many other examples of commonly used drugs that may be permitted by one group and disallowed by another.

In any case, the athlete should work closely with the supervising medical team to determine which drugs are safe and permitted for use. Who determines whether a doping violation has occurred? The primary reason why performance enhancing drugs PEDs are outlawed in professional sports is that they give users an unfair advantage over the rest of the field.

Various professional sports leagues have attempted to set a level playing field by testing for drug use and suspending those found guilty. It's a noble effort, but it's clearly not working. Stiff punishments have done little to reduce the number of cyclists caught cheating every year; as Deadspin helpfully points out, the inheritors of Lance Armstrong's seven abandoned Tour de France titles have all been implicated in doping scandals.

Major League Baseball also hands down suspensions each season to players caught using outlawed substances, and it's absurd to think those players are the only ones guilty of juicing. So if we really want to level the playing field, it may be time to head in the other direction: legalize performance enhancers. Not only would the playing field suddenly be even for all players, it would be at a higher level.

A huge part of watching sports is witnessing the very peak of human athletic ability, and legalizing performance enhancing drugs would help athletes climb even higher. Steroids and doping will help pitchers to throw harder, home runs to go further, cyclists to charge for longer and sprinters to test the very limits of human speed. It also makes sense for professional sports to allow steroids from a business standpoint. One needs only look to the late s, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa put on two of the most memorable baseball seasons in and Even cursory fans became invested in the home run races, especially in when McGwire shattered Roger Maris' year-old single season home run record.

Jerseys flew off the shelves, games sold out and baseball was so exciting that some have gone so far as to claim it ruined post-steroid baseball. But even synthetic drugs and man-made technology seem to be OK if the aim is to make sick people better, or broken people whole again. And so when we talk about expanding or transcending what we consider to be normal, uh, then a certain uneasiness starts to set in.

There was an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education last month about university professors taking stimulants like Adderall to increase their academic productivity. Oddly, the article quoted, quoted several professors who considered this cheating at academics. Academics is the search for truth and knowledge, if a drug can make that search more productive with few side effects, why in the world wouldn't you take it?

As technology helped humanity obliterate a lot of these milestones, and helped us move beyond what, until a hundred years ago, had been a long, bleak history, similar advances over the years in nutrition, training, and using technology to improve technique have enabled sports records to fall with astonishing regularity. Sports is about exploring and stretching the lengths of human potential. Going back to even the pre-modern Olympics, when athletes ate live bees, and ate crushed sheep testicles to get a leg up on the competition, uh, sports has never been about physical ability alone.

It shouldn't be surprising, then, that many of the biggest proponents of banning performance enhancing drugs in sports are also suspect of some of these continued advancements in human achievement. Kass who champions rigorous sports testing, has also spent much of his career actually lamenting the fact that human beings are living longer than ever before.

He considers this contrary to some odd concept of natural order. Uh, of course there have been luddites and naturalists like Mr. The essence of the agreement today I think is what people like Mr. I think the difference is that I'm sort of willing to take a live and let live approach and let everyone sort of explore their own boundaries and their own potential. Um, whereas I think some of our opponents are more interested in opposing their view of what is natural and what is, uh, human on everyone else, which of course brings us back to Mencken.

I think, uh, our opponents want to legislate away what they believe are bad decisions, and if a free society means anything, it means we should be able to make all decisions, including the bad ones.

Radley Balko, thank you. And now speaking against the motion, Dale Murphy. Accurately just mentioned, studies, recent studies are showing that young athletes and high school kids are, are using performance enhancing drugs to a lesser degree. To legitimize, um, the performance enhancing drugs in sports I feel would send the wrong message to young athletes.

There are certainly legitimate uses for human growth hormone and steroids, um, as, as we all know. But to hit a baseball further, or to run a hundred yard dash faster is not the reason and the legitimate use of these, uh, of these drugs. Um, Dr. Fost mentioned that at one point in time there were six percent that were using, um, performance enhancing drugs in the major leagues.

It really makes my point exactly. Um, if accepted, what about those, for instance, in Major League Baseball, what about those who do not want to use it? The playing field, then, once again, is, is not level.

Um, the only way, someone said earlier, the only way you could probably make this work is that if you forced everybody to take performance enhancing drugs, which um, we all know wouldn't work.

You mentioned Barry Bonds adding, um, seats, um, fans in the seats every game he played. I would have to say that in San Francisco he was, um, generally accepted, but everywhere else he went, I think those ten thousand extra went there to jeer him and his accomplishments.

After the season, after all this has come out with Mark McGwire, I think most of us look back now and say we got caught up in something that we really didn't want to support.

If there was no alternative, I could understand us giving into this problem. Certainly there are a lot of problems that young people have and society has. But this is one of them. Um, and if there was no answer to, uh, this problem I think I would understand giving in, and voting, uh, in favor of this motion.

But I believe that there is a pro—there is an answer to the problem. And, uh, as was mentioned earlier we look at smoking in public. There can be a change in culture in professional athletics, and I believe that it is starting. We need, uh, better testing, harsher punishments, and, and people will decide not to get involved with performance-enhancing drugs. Uh, gambling in baseball is the perfect example.

Um, the culture of, uh, professional baseball players is the one thing they know, and, and one thing they learn from the minute they sign a professional contract, is that if you gamble on the game in any way, shape or form, your career will be over.

I believe we can change the culture, and to accept this motion, really would set us back with the progress that we have made.

After tonight, I think you will see—you will feel, uh, as you listen closely, that, you feel as I do, that there is no sustainable, logical, reasonable, um, uh… reason, for these things to be accepted. If you put any of these, uh, alleg—these, uh, positions under scrutiny, I think you will all come to understand, that we simply do not need this in sports at any level. Let alone the high school kids that see professional athletes and are tempted to use them.

And we are making progress, and studies have shown that. As far as baseball is concerned, certainly people like the long ball. Um, but, uh, this, this past year was, in the la—in the last 10 years, this past year, had the seventh fewest home runs of the last decade, and yet we broke records again with attendance. Attendance is good, home runs do not have to be up. People love the game, they appreciate the game, they appreciate finesse. For instance— um, um, comparing, uh, anabolic steroids or performance-enhancing drugs to the Greeks wearing tennis shoes.

Or to the ancient Greek athletes, uh, eating bees. Especially with our use. What concerns me is the example that the athletes at the highest level set for our youth. Dale Murphy, thank you. Dick Pound, you have stated that there are obvious health risks to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, steroids in particular.

Are those health risks truly obvious. Fost points out that, there have been more players killed, one at the major league level and many at the amateur level, playing baseball, than have been killed because of steroid use as baseball players. Me still? I—I would say that the, part of the difficulty with this is, is collecting data, both his and, and other data, because, for many years, all of this use has been clandestine, and hidden.

Radley Balko, uh, you are advocating a live-and-let-live approach to this. But all sports have rules which regulate the competition. No one can stop me in my back yard from using an aluminum bat if I wanna play a game of my own. But they can in a major league game. Cork and saliva are perfectly natural and legal substances but not in the context of major league baseball. So why are these—why are these things analogous. Pound is right, when you enter into a league and you agree to, to compete, uh, you agree to a predetermined set of rules.

Um, and I think that, you know, I think that athletes, uh, care about their bodies and they care about their, their earning potential. I think, I think people, uh, have, I think athletes have a little bit, uh, more respect for their bodies than that. A huge percentage of them answer yes. Well, I mean and if, if the, you know, US Olympic Committee wants to, to, uh, set those rules, uh, you know, I, I, I think there are important distinctions to be drawn, uh, uh, between amateur athletics and professional athletics but, uh, you know, I—I think, uh, a couple ones, I think….

The finest, uh, Italian cyclist, Fausto Coppi was once asked, and winner of the Tour de France was once asked, uh…how often had he taken la bamba, or amphetamines during his career, he said, only when absolutely necessary. And when asked precisely how often that was he said, almost always.

Another Tour de France, Jacques Anquetil in a debate with a French politician said, what do you expect us to do, ride the tour on mineral water? Where our team agrees with, uh, Dick Pound and, and, uh, the opposition is that this is really only the tip of the iceberg. Not only has it failed, it must fail. Insulin-like growth factor can be injected into muscles, to improve muscular strength, it would have to be detected with a muscle biopsy.

Uh, science has created super-mice capable of running six, uh, kilometers instead of meters, by altering their glucose metabolism. We will not be able to detect these changes. Not only is the war on drugs bound to fail, uh, it also has other adverse effects, it reduces interest, this year, uh, in the Tour de France the race leader Michael Rasmussen, was, uh, sacked by his team on allegations of taking drugs.

What is policy and the current zero-tolerance approach to drugs in sport, is inconsistent and confused. Yet they all have exactly the same effect. Some enhancers have been permitted in sport. Caffeine increases the time to exhaustion, or reduces the time, uh, increases the time to exhaustion by 20 percent. None of these have had adverse effect on sport. You know it when you see it. Well of course D. Professional classical musicians regularly take beta blockers to reduce, trim and enhance their performance.

Indeed, just as we can increase the artistic expression through the use of beta blockers to enhance musical performance we could use them to enhance performance in archery, or indeed, in many, uh, sports requiring control of anxiety. To recover from the grueling training necessary to run those times you need steroids to increa—increase recovery. To say that we should reduce…drugs in sport or eliminate them because they increase performance, is simply like saying that we should eliminate alcohol from parties because it increases sociability.

So our proposal, is that we allow a modest approach. We allow performance enhancers which are safe, and consistent with the risks that athletes already entail. No athlete today is dying in competition from taking EPO. Indeed I would prefer to take growth hormone prescribed by a doctor, than compete in professional American football, because I know of no ventilator-dependent quadriplegic caused by taking growth hormone. The drugs need to be consistent with the spirit of an activity, creating webbed hands and feet, which is possible, which is possible, would compromise the spirit of spearing— swimming.

But allowing athletes to recover from injuries consistent of sport. We should set limits, as the International Cycling Union has done, on the hermatocrit…and test health, not test for drugs. We are not horses or dogs, flogged to display our maximum biological potential, the spirit of being human, is to make choices. To be human is to be better. But there are two ways to reduce cheating. One is to ramp up the war on drugs which is bound to fail, the other is to change the rule, the rules to allow regulated, supervised access.

We agree that you should hear—adhere to the rules. Julian Savulescu, thank you, and now our sixth and final debater, speaking against the motion, George Michael, George. Number one, the rules of the game say that steroids and for good reason, performance-enhancing drugs are absolutely illegal. Steroids however you have to know this. They will make you faster, they will make you stronger, and they make help you look and feel and be younger.

Steroids will make you wealthy. Steroids will make you famous. During the course of my preparation I talked to a Hall of Famer. I said let me ask you something. What if there were steroids now. Said, well. However…even though there is no clinical proof, let me repeat, there is no clinical proof that steroids directly lead to death, there are certain guys have suffered something, now, Lyle Alzado was mentioned. Lyle Alzado is—as—Alzado is not a name to me.

I knew him, I interviewed him, I liked him. When he graduated as a senior and he started steroids in as a freshman. When he graduated it was pound muscle mass. He died, at the age of Ken Caminiti.

He tears his rotator cuff. Ken Caminiti was a good guy, a tough guy, a bull of a guy. He said I gotta get well, so he played even though he was in great pain. Said Ken.

So he did. He used so much steroids, that he became a giant of a man, he was bulging, Ken Caminiti went from hitting. Nobody wants to walk out on a field naked. He was the MVP of baseball in Eight years later he was dead, at the age of Even though, he was an ala—anabolic steroid type free. If any of you are Yankee fans, think back to The Yankees win the World Series.

They have a relief pitcher you may or may not have heard of named Dan Naulty. You ever heard of him, Bob?

Guy said to him, Don, you gotta get on some steroids, man, you put some body on you. In he was with the Yankees, he weighed pounds. And it was all muscle. But he had to have major surgery because his veins were clotted against his arteries.

He had to have major surgery because he tore the muscle right off—the, the muscle and the groin completely off the bone. James Andrews, a man I consider to be one of the foremost absolutely best surgeons of all. That in , 17 percent…17 percent of total baseball payroll went to guys who were on the injured list with muscle tears, muscle strains, ruptured Achilles tendon, and on goes the list. He said that we have had a percent increase in just the five years prior to Most of them accord9ing to Dr.