The Olympics has always been the ultimate test of the fastest, highest and strongest
athletes.
And now, it seems like a test of which athletes and countries can get away with using prohibited
drugs or supplements to win that test.
According to a 2014 report from the World Anti-Doping Agency, between 1-3% of elite
athletes test positive for the presence of at least 1 banned substance.
So your mind probably turns to those who have been caught—Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones,
Ben Johnson, and -- very recently -- Russian gymnast Nikolai Kusenkov.
And 1 or 2% of athletes doesn’t seem like a big deal.
But in another 2010 report, an anonymous survey revealed that 29-45% of athletes admitted
to doping.
It seems like Lance and Marion have a fair bit of company.
So, why do only a small percentage of athletes who are doping get caught and reprimanded
for it?
And how is that fair to the athletes who actually follow the rules?
A big problem is that doping is difficult to catch—biological testing fails to detect
a lot of these substances.
And there are a lot of substances!
According to the United States Anti-Doping Agency, there are 10 different classes of
drugs most commonly used.
The most well known are anabolic agents or steroids, peptide hormones and human growth
factor.
Other classes of performance enhancing drugs include Beta-2 agonists (which typically treat
asthma), stimulants (used for ADHD), narcotics, cannabinoids (derived from marijuana), glucocorticosteroids,
beta blockers, and diuretics.
And a somewhat newer performance enhancement, blood doping, includes some medications like
erythropoietin (EPO), synthetic oxygen carriers, and blood transfusions; all used in order
to increase an athlete’s red blood cell count.2
That’s a pretty long list.
And each class of drugs, and each individual drug has a different physiological effect
on the body.
For example, testosterone, an anabolic agent, helps build muscle mass without increasing
fat, it increases aerobic endurance and overall strength.
But on the flip side, it can also cause acne, male pattern baldness, increased aggression,
and stunted growth in younger athletes.
Another prohibited substance, Human Growth Factor, is thought to increase an athlete’s
muscle mass, energy, and exercise capacity, but can also cause an athlete to experience
severe headaches, arthritis, high blood pressure, and even tumors.
These physiological side effects are pretty obvious and it is possible to test for these
drugs.
Other forms of doping are much more difficult to detect, like blood transfusions.
And each require its own test.
And each test takes time.
Also, new performance enhancing drugs are constantly being developed and some athletes
are always looking for new ways to dope undetected.
Taking epitestosterone alongside testosterone often fools drug tests, as does taking several
different performance-enhancing drugs at low doses.
It’s no wonder that so many athletes are able to slip through drug tests undetected.
Social psychology research has shown when the risk of getting caught is lower, more
people cheat.
And when people are perceived to be cheating, it’s more likely others start to cheat too.
So to stop doping from a psychological perspective, the chances of getting caught need to increase,
and the benefits of cheating need to decrease.
But this assumes that in the world of banned substances, both getting caught and cheating
have a somewhat linear relationship – and it’s complicated.
Not all performance enhancing drugs are banned from professional sports.
Caffeine, for example, was legalized in 2004 despite being known to extend endurance.
Using an altitude tent to increase the number of red blood cells in your blood is also okay;
while injecting the hormone EPO -- which has the same effect -- is not.
According to University of Oxford bioethicist Julian Savulescu, certain methods of doping
are allowed because we, as a society, see them as “natural.”
He calls it the Nature Bias, where we take a moral stance that anything “artificial”
is bad for the spirit of sports.
So instead of allowing this nature bias to influence how we determine what performance
enhancers are acceptable, why don’t sports just allow doping?
They allow other unnatural aspects of sports, like carbon fibre vaulting poles and aerodynamic
helmets.
In The Conversation, Savulescu writes that we should allow physiological doping – putting
limits on hormone levels and red blood cell counts, and testing whether those levels are
safe, rather than how they were achieved.
If we had an enforceable set of rules, experts and doctors could assist and monitor athletes
to make sure they’re healthy; rather than athletes and teams self-administering drugs
that are potentially harmful just to get an edge.
Athletic agencies would also be able to better focus their drug tests, narrowing in on just
the most dangerous methods of performance enhancement.
The doping problem isn’t going away.
Instead of trying to eliminate it, should we meet in the middle?
To find out more of the weird and interesting effects of performance enhancing drugs on
your body, head over to the awesome channel Life Noggin, where Blocko has maybe a bit
too much juice?
And don’t forget to subscribe.
And let me know your thoughts – should more performance enhancing drugs be legalised and
regulated?
Or is that a bit…
dopey?
I’ll see you down in the comments.