All’s Fair in Love and Sport

August 8, 2006

In the wake of Floyd Landis’ positive test results for synthetic testosterone doping, The Onion.com – a popular adult news parody site – is running a special report: “Your Favorite Player Took Steroids.” They also lampoon the beleaguered Tour de France cyclist with a “Cheat to Win” yellow wristband.

Whether you believe Landis cheated or not, The Onion’s report pokes at the fact that chemical enhancement has and will continue to be a problem in the sports arena. If the aim of sport is primarily entertainment, why not permit athletes to use whatever performance-boosting drugs they want in order to win?

The problem, of course, is that there is no limit to what human imagination can conceive to push the performance envelope.

If sport is more importantly about personal discipline and fair competition, these would be undermined in a doping “arms race.” In their report, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, the President’s Council on Bioethics makes an important point when they opine, “There seems to be something dehumanizing in coming to rely so heavily on one’s chemist to excel, to the point where one might wonder whether such excellence is still ‘personal’ at all.”