The essential standard supporting that question is that your own self-interest supersedes any law, any compact or any contract. But is that the case? If you understand the rules, and agree to participate, are you not committed to those rules?

Depends on whether it is a completely free contract, or something so heavily regulated by unjustified government that nothing in it is morally binding.

In the case of organized sports as they are today, I take the latter position, especially about PEDs.

Pro athletes, football players in particular, so abuse their bodies with too much exercise that many of them die of strokes in their 40s or 50s. If you're willing to do that, the added risk from taking steroids disappears in the noise. So in effect, the only people who care about athletes doping (and are against it) are the same people who assume that all non-doctor-approved drug use is harmful and should be banned. To the athlete it makes good sense for practical, rational reasons. Let him do it.

(Aside: I believe that some sports, including football and boxing, pose dangers that are NOT adequately addressed by present rules, and I would like to see the players form unions to write and insist on new rules. Government regulation of any sport is unlikely to help.)

Political contributions, to me, are a completely different question. But I hold as Spooner did that the Constitution and laws are morally binding only on officials who've sworn to follow them. And even they should put individual moral rights first and anything the law says as a distant second.

That would be something! I saw one in a local race: middle of the pack more or less. Very impressive.

Thank you. I had thought you were referring to bladerunners.

Quite interesting. Thank you.

Jan

"Ernst van Dyk has won the Boston Marathon wheelchair division ten times and holds the world record at 1:18:27, set in Boston in 2004. Jean Driscoll won eight times (seven consecutively) and holds the women's world record at 1:34:22." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon
Below that, the best foot time is 2:02:57 for men and 2:15:25 for women.

And that's just the winners. My brother runs marathons and told me that the wheelchairs ("rims") as a pack are sent off ahead of the foot racers because most of them will finish before most of the others.

With genetic modifications available, perhaps the Special Olympics could eventually be discontinued.

I am intrigued by your statement that the parathletes do better in marathons. I did a quick look to see if I could find info on this, but all I got was hoopla. Can you tell me more?

Jan

Thanks for the pointer. I spent some time reading about NASCAR safety issues including pit speeds, roof spoilers, and carburetor restricting plates.

As for American football, my opinion is that it is the armor that led to the unintended consequence of greater injuries (more often, more severe). You don't get that in rugby. Or so I believe.

As for organizations making rules for athletes - or anyone else - it does depend on who can get hurt by whom. NASCAR is "rules of the road" to the Nth power: cars are dangerous to other people. On the other hand, Olympic archery is a sport with real weapons, but the contestants do not shoot at each other. So, rules about what you can eat or drink or inject would seem to be irrelevant there.

It also has to do with the relationship between the players and organization(s). Does the organization enjoy a position of special knowledge that the individual lacks? As I have said above, I do not have a good answer for all cases.

It is ironic you would point out that reducing the top speed of cars in NASCAR would make that sport safer, because that's exactly what has happened over the years. Although not as low as 45 mph. Still the point is sport organization do make the rules in part to promote safety.

As far making athletes faster and stronger being a safety concern, it is clearly the case in football. The harder the athletes hit each the more likely injuries occur. Of course, it's a balancing act. You want the sport to be competitive as well.

Of course, safety concerns would be around the drugs themselves. The drugs could harm the athletes themselves. Which why I would say sport organization should ban the drugs to promote safety. Of course, an organization could allow performance enhancing drugs if it is allow to do so by law.

However, I argue for what an sport organization should do.

Relative to our discussion, this proves -- what?

There is a vast difference between machines and carbon based life http://forms.In terms of machines, newer and better make older and existing obsolete. They are not broken into catagories. Do we want to do the same with people? It may happen if computers become self motivated and self repairing and a singularity is reached, man could become obsolete and the prevailing intelligent race on earth would be machines.

Thanks! I remembered that one as soon as they went to the weight-lifter. I have keep from laughing out loud: my wife is studying for an exam.

NASCAR would be a lot safer at 45 mph, too. I am open to any argument, but you offered only an assertion. Do you have an objective justification for your claim? Has anyone been hurt by an enhanced athlete because of their enhancement?

See scojohnson's comments above. (Mentioning Tom Brady sort of deflates your argument.) The point is that athletic performance does not from a pill. But you are what you eat. Today's athletes are far superior to their equivalents of 100 years ago.

You have to work at it, of course, same as anything, but small differences matter in intense competition.

The winner already is the one whose science is better: better training, better diet, better birth...

I am sure that you do not intend this, but you know, you could take your statement and make it about railroads: "Sure, competition is fine, but what about too much competition? We should have three rail systems, one for steam engines, one for diesel-electric, and one for maglev."

See my comments about the Boston Marathon. The winner in 1897 could not beat a woman 40-49 or a man 60-69 today.

Enhancement has been with us for 100 years...

As I said to jlc below in response to her support for you, we already have three "Olympics" - regular, para, and special. We can organize sports or anything else any number of ways, but it comes down to the individual.

See my comment below: “On April 19, 1897, John J. McDermott of New York, emerged from a 15-member starting field and captured the first B.A.A. Marathon in 2:55:10. ... In 2006, that mark would place him 5th among the women age 40-49 (Gina M. McGee, 2:55:03). However, the modern race is longer. Therefore, today, McDermott would beat all of the women 50-59, but none of the women 40-49. His time calculated for the longer course would be the same as John Smallwood, in the Men‟s Age 60-69 who clocked 3:10:44."

It is obvious that we have been "enhancing performance" many ways in the past 100 years. I submit that diet and training alone have changed athletic competition.

"To put this into historical perspective, the first Boston Marathon measured 24.5 miles. “On April 19, 1897, John J. McDermott of New York, emerged from a 15-member starting field and captured the first B.A.A. Marathon in 2:55:10.”6 In 2006, that mark would place him 5th among the women age 40-49 (Gina M. McGee, 2:55:03). However, the modern race is longer. Therefore, today, McDermott would beat all of the women 50-59, but none of the women 40-49. His time calculated for the longer course would be the same as John Smallwood, in the Men‟s Age 60-69 who clocked 3:10:44." -- Aging in America: Alternatives and Government Programs by Michael E. Marotta (paper for undergraduate sociology class archived here: https://sites.google.com/site/washten...

Interesting post. It might be argued that performance-enhancing drugs violate a contract. It might also be argued that their use defrauds the other competitors. As an analogy, I suggest that counting cards at Blackjack is not cheating, but using a marked deck, or having a "snake" up your sleeve, are cheating and thus fraudulent actions, contrary to the contract among the players.

In those cases, government intervention at the request of an injured party would be appropriate.

"On Thursday afternoon [March 3, 2016], in a majestic courtroom on the 17th floor of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in downtown Manhattan, three distinguished judges who hold degrees from Ivy League universities will listen to some of the nation's highest-priced lawyers argue about air pressure in footballs.

The judges of the nation's second-highest court will determine whether U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman was right or wrong in overturning Tom Brady's four-game suspension at the start of the 2015 season. Brady was suspended by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for his role in a scheme to lower the pressure in footballs used in a game, for obstructing an investigation into the incident and for destroying important evidence." -- http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/i...

That would be three or more Olympics, because we already have the Paralympics and Special Olympics. In fact, for the parathlete competing in a marathon, they go first because their times are so much better than a normal runner's.

Obviously, I agree with you that eliminating genetic liabilities and adding genetic advantages are both desirable.

Thanks for the insight.

"there should be two Olympics (or, I would add - other competitions): one with drugs and one without."
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4090

First question: If the drugs can be legally purchased, whether or not some athletic organization permits or forbids the use of performance enhancing drugs would be totally up to that organization. It would be a private matter.

Second question: Government authority must be respected only only within its one morally proper function: acting as the monopoly agency for the use of retaliatory force. And this retaliatory force can be used only in the protection of individual rights, which means that the only proper subject of legislation is the protection of individual rights.

Outside this morally proper sphere the law has no moral authority. And, since every government action is essentially an instance of the use of force, and every instance of force is either offensive or defensive (there is no third alternative), if a government action is not retaliatory in function, then it is, in effect, criminal.

Of course, you have to rationally evaluate in any particular case whether the risk of discovery and punishment by the government is worth taking, and avoid it if it is not. But in many cases obeying the law, as in the example presented, may be self-destructive, i.e. immoral.

I agree with davidmcnab, who suggest that there should be two Olympics (or, I would add - other competitions): one with drugs and one without. The idea that scojohnson makes that athletes should be able to use drugs off-season, but not during competitions, is also interesting. In the end, DrZ has it right: drugs are small-coin-change in comparison to genetic mods. I am in favor of (a) eliminating genetic liabilities, and (b) adding genetic advantages.

Jan

The problem with enhancement drugs is how far do they go and what is the degree of the enhancement? If it's OK to use enhancing drugs, can they be used to the point where they make an athlete superhuman? If they do, are these athletes competing as humans or as something else, perhaps designated as E-Humans (E for "enhanced").Perhaps two separate catagories in the future: Enhanced Athletes and Unenhanced Athletes. What the hell, let's just use Cybernetic Robots. The winner will be the one whose science is the better.

Genetic engineering will soon leave any questions about drugs in the dustbin. The more complete our understanding of the human genome, the more likely the temptation to tinker with it. Even though medical science addresses the idea of genetic engineering as another tool to help disabled persons, it's transparently obvious that those same methods for correcting flawed genes can provide enhancements.

There are natural genetic qualities that exist today that are desirable as enhancements. My family has a history of healthy longevity, with some of my ancestors healthy centenarians as far back as the 16th century, when the normal lifespan was around 40. None of my predecessors have died of cancer or serious heart disorders, and dementia is absent. I haven't had any significant illness for about the last 30 years, and take no medications at over 70 years old.

I've offered to submit to genetic studies, as I would like to think I could help improve the chance of others for a long, productive life. What mystified me for a while was that I was being turned away, but then I realized most of the longevity and health improvement research is funded by pharmaceutical companies. Creating a reliable method of gene modification that would eliminate the need for most drugs would bankrupt them.

I'd appreciate any suggestions about how I might find a more welcome research team. Anyway, there are others like me, with unusual physical and mental abilities that should be transferable to others who might wish to have their genetic talents.

I'd like to see two Olympics - one which strives to run 'clean', like the present one, and the other which permits all manner of performance-enhancing drugs.

" I'm not a bodybuilder, I was just very focused on it for about 2 hours every day.

When you hit that mark, no matter what I ate, how much sleep I got, how much effort I was putting in, I couldn't go any 'larger' than I was, or stronger necessarily. I continued to improve my cardio & such,"

Based on what you've said there you were in a state of perpetual overtraining. To push the weight you can lift beyond that level means not lifting every day but rather no more than once every 4 days - and doing no cardio work in the meantime. A better regimen would have easily seen you push beyond 400lb squats without drugs of any kind - or even extreme protein intake. But to do so is also a regimen you rarely see because so many are focused on size as opposed to strength.

Sadly, even with the drugs the poor form so many athletes have would still leave them injury prone. Too much reliance on "isolation" and machines as opposed to free weight multi-group routines. Anyway, congrats on finding your and pushing your personal limits - if only more people pushed theirs we'd see fewer problems in society at large, IMO.