Friday, May 8, 2009

Performance enhancing drugs

Performance enhancing drugs are in the news again. My view is professional athletes should be allowed to take anything the team doctor is willing to prescribe with all usage publicly reported. Professional athletes are well paid and the reporting requirement should act to limit abuse. It is my understanding that experimental operations for sports injuries have ended up improving care for everybody, I don't see why this wouldn't also be true for experimental use of drugs.

3 comments:

  1. For starters: because that would transform sports into a questionable endeavor -- a compound show of human body capabilities pumped with latest chemical substance combinations.
    Even more importantly: because such a transformation would put athletes before a choice to either join the chemlab team (and subject their bodies most likely to permanent damages), or to stay away because they could never compete.

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  2. (obviously, my comment refers to the first part of the post and I implied the question "why shouldn't be allowed to take anything the team doctor is willing to prescribe", I do not object to the second part)

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  3. Regarding the danger to the athletes, I don't think drug use under medical supervision in the public eye would be all that dangerous especially when compared to the current widespread illict use. Many pro athletes already subject themselves to considerable health risks. Pro football in particular is really hard on the body and many retired players are reported to be in bad shape. I don't see why drug risks should be considered more objectionable than other risks. And as I noted professional athletes are well compensated for any risks they bear.

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