The BBC had a story about performance enhancing drugs which addresses some of the issues raised a couple years ago in this thread at Seth’s web site about the use of PEDs in cycling (if you don’t follow cycling, the short version is that the sport has had a series of high profile scandals involving the use of performance enhancing drugs).
The main problem with existing PEDs, in my opinion, is that they are not safe. But at the same time, most sports governing bodies also ban drugs that are barely PEDs and that are perfectly safe (like stupidly disqualifying gymnasts because they took OTC cold remedies).
The BBC reports on the International Olympic Committee’s concession that it will not have a test in places before the 2004 Olympics to detect athletes who are using Humane Growth Hormone to enhance their performance. The BBC quotes Olivier Rabin, science director of the World Anti-Dopin Agency, as saying,
HGH is one of the main concerns we have. It’s quite a challenge. There are currently six different countries working on the detection of HGH. We would like to have something in place for the Olympics, but this (attemt at) detection has been going on for years. History has shown that you cannot always get tests ready on time, because science does not move forward smoothly.
In fact, the WADA was supposed to have an HGH test ready for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
I do not know if HGH can be used safely by athletes to improve their performance, but if it can why should we even try to ban its use anymore than we should try to ban any of the other high tech devices and methods that are used to push human performance well beyond what would have been possible 40 or 50 years ago?
One objection is that if PEDs use is widely distributed, then all the competitors end up at the same relative position afterward. So, for example, if a PED increases a runner’s speed in a 10k race by 15 seconds, then all the competitors will take the drug and end up going 15 seconds faster without much of a shakeout in the order of finishing.
But, again, this seems like an objection that could be levelled at almost any sports innovation. Using 300 lb. linemen in the NFL gave the teams who initially adopted that practice a huge (pun intended) advantage. Today everybody uses 300 lbs. linemen and the relative advantage has disappeared.
Similarly, baseball teams whose players began serious weight training likely enjoyed a small advantage over their competitors, but now that weight training and other conditioning methods are widespread, the relative advantage has disappeared (i.e., all teams — except our pathetic Detroit Tigers — hit home runs today at a level above previous generations, though home runs are still distributed in similar ways between teams).
The bottom line is that people watch sports, in part, to see other human beings reaching and even exceeding their potential. People want to see the baseball star who can hit one or two more home runs in a season than anyone else ever has, or who can run 100 meter just a tenth of a second faster than anyone else in the world has.
Why should we hamper such athletes by banning the use of safe performance enhancing drugs, especially given that the future is likely to see treatments that are a) increasingly safe, b) increasingly effective, and b) like HGH, increasingly hard to detect.
Lenainrg a ton from these neat articles.