Athletes voluntarily agree to partake in sporting competitions. These contests require opponents to promise to play the game, at the same time, and under the same conditions.7 Performance enhancement substance use is a core ethical issue in sports today. Some athletes feel the use of steroids and other substances violate the equal conditions requirement for sport as well as good sportsmanship conduct, due to the unnatural enhancement they provide. Others feel due to the ubiquity of the drugs they are fair game and see no ethical infraction of equal conditions or sportsmanship by using them to enhance performance.
[...] The WADA performs 180,000 drug tests annually; each one costing five to six hundred dollars.11 According to the World Anti-Doping Agency's “2007 Prohibited illegal performance enhancing substances can be divided into five specific categories including hormones, beta-2 agonists, anti-estrogenic agents, diuretics, and the most commonly abused category, anabolic agents. Three methods are listed as prohibited chemical and physical manipulation, gene doping, and most notably enhancement of oxygen transfer.11 Each substance and method serves a different purpose and certain types may be more prominent in specific sports. [...]
[...] With this realization and the limited time athletes have to accomplish feats such as these, performance enhancers become appealing because they offer an otherwise superhuman ability. This may have been the case when Floyd Landis stunned the world in stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France with what is deemed of the most epic days of cycling ever seen” following his breakdown the day before that caused him to fall from first place in the standings to eleventh. His stellar performance included a 120 km breakaway, winning the mountain stage by six minutes and rising eight places in the standings. [...]
[...] Dickey, C. & Gavin, J. (2003, October 23). Steroids threaten health of athletes and integrity of sports performance. Retrieved March from http://www.acsm.org/Content/ContentFolders/NewsReleases/2003/STEROIDS_THREAT EN_HEALTH_OF_ATHLETES_AND_INTEGRITY_OF_SPORTS_PERFORMANCE.htm. Dowshen, S. (2006, September). Are steroids worth the risk? Retrieved on March from http://www.kidshealth.org/teen/drug_alcohol/drugs/steroids.html. Gucza, R. (2006, May). History of doping. Retrieved March from http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/Athens_Grucza.pdf. Harris, J. (2006, June 21). Only players can clean up [...]
[...] Overuse of EPO causes the blood to become too thick with red blood cells and interfere with the blood flow through the heart causing hearth failure and death ensues.6 Players who use performance enhancers and those who are not opposed to their use, feel they are fair. The fairness of an advantage refers to the action or circumstances that have taken place to create the advantage. An example would be a baseball player increasing upper body strength by weight lifting to increase his ability to hit home runs versus one who uses a corked bat to hit more home runs. [...]
[...] These benefits are routinely taken advantage of and do not evoke the ethical criticism that use of performance enhancement drugs do While those athletes who chose to take performance enhancers may be at an advantage, so to are those who have been physically endowed. People are unique. This applies to the success individuals will experience in the athletic domain due to the composition of their bodies. Testosterone levels in men can vary over threefold. This enables men with higher levels of testosterone to accumulate greater amounts of muscle mass thus excelling at sports requiring strength. [...]
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