It's too quiet lately: A moral/ethics question

Originally posted by Leonard Jansen Question: Are the people who take it for the health benefits welcome to compete in master's swimming? Would your answer be different if the treatment were available inexpensively/free to everyone? Drug testing isn't currently done in masters swimming. I certainly can't imagine that your hypothetical scenario would change that. A better question, I think, is whether people who take it for the health benefit should be allowed to compete in meets where drug testing is done. Whether such people would be allowed to compete is, unfortunately, a difficult question to answer. But whether they should be allowed to compete is much easier. The Rationale For Drug Testing First, the rationale for drug testing is not simply that there are drugs that enhance performance (though some people seem to believe this). The rationale is that there are drugs which enhance performance at the expense of impairing, or at least endangering, the athlete's long-term health. If we allow even one athlete to do this, then every one of that athlete's competitors will be forced to choose either to be at a competitive disadvantage or to sacrifice his/her health on the altar of temporary glory. And not only is that a choice which no athlete should ever have to make - it also degrades the entire character of athletics (which, in general, promotes good health). But if it would be wrong to force athletes to make this choice, it would be even worse to force them to choose between impairing their health and not being allowed to compete at all. At this is precisely the choice they would have to make in the hypothetical scenario with which you have presented us. The Precedents Actually, this scenario is not radically different, except in scale, from one which has faced the governing boards of our sport for a long, long time. There have always been athletes who have needed to take certain substances for health reasons. The general policy the boards have adopted is that such use is permitted subject to certain guidelines: 1) An athlete should not be allowed to use a substance that enhances his/her performance above that of his/her healthy counterparts if there is an alternative treatment that would not enhance performance. 2) If there is no alternative that would not enhance performance, the athlete should be permitted to use the substance, but he/she should be tested to insure that the substance is only being used in the quantities that are needed to treat the health problem. 3) The athlete must disclose the use of the substance to the governing boards so that items 1 and 2 can be enforced. The Disease The health problems you have listed - life span, general mental and physical health, heart disease, cancers, Alzheimer's disease - are all closely tied to the aging process. And that raises another troublesome problem: The medical community, in general, does not currently classify the aging process as a disease (unless it occurs very rapidly, as in progeria). But there seems to be no intelligent rationale for this attitude. I have never seen a comprehensive definition of the word "disease" that would not be satisfied by the aging process, and suspect that this attitude exists because the medical community, historically, has had no prophylaxis, no cure, and woefully few treatments for ordinary geria (or, for that matter, for progeria). The attitude may stem, in part, from a purely practical feeling that there is no point in calling something a disease if you can't do anything about it. But it may also be a form of denial. After all, if you were a doctor, would you find it comfortable to admit that, in spite of all your medical wisdom and all the diseases you can treat effectively, there remains one disease that is insidious, debilitating, disfiguring, and always fatal, that afflicts 100% of the population (unless they die first from something else), and that you can do almost nothing about it? Once you recognize that the aging process is a disease, then it makes perfect sense that athletes should be able to take medications to treat it, and that this should not bar them from competition (any more than, e.g., a diabetic who takes insulin or a diabetes drug should be barred from competition). Bob

Originally posted by Leonard Jansen Question: Are the people who take it for the health benefits welcome to compete in master's swimming? Would your answer be different if the treatment were available inexpensively/free to everyone? Drug testing isn't currently done in masters swimming. I certainly can't imagine that your hypothetical scenario would change that. A better question, I think, is whether people who take it for the health benefit should be allowed to compete in meets where drug testing is done. Whether such people would be allowed to compete is, unfortunately, a difficult question to answer. But whether they should be allowed to compete is much easier. The Rationale For Drug Testing First, the rationale for drug testing is not simply that there are drugs that enhance performance (though some people seem to believe this). The rationale is that there are drugs which enhance performance at the expense of impairing, or at least endangering, the athlete's long-term health. If we allow even one athlete to do this, then every one of that athlete's competitors will be forced to choose either to be at a competitive disadvantage or to sacrifice his/her health on the altar of temporary glory. And not only is that a choice which no athlete should ever have to make - it also degrades the entire character of athletics (which, in general, promotes good health). But if it would be wrong to force athletes to make this choice, it would be even worse to force them to choose between impairing their health and not being allowed to compete at all. At this is precisely the choice they would have to make in the hypothetical scenario with which you have presented us. The Precedents Actually, this scenario is not radically different, except in scale, from one which has faced the governing boards of our sport for a long, long time. There have always been athletes who have needed to take certain substances for health reasons. The general policy the boards have adopted is that such use is permitted subject to certain guidelines: 1) An athlete should not be allowed to use a substance that enhances his/her performance above that of his/her healthy counterparts if there is an alternative treatment that would not enhance performance. 2) If there is no alternative that would not enhance performance, the athlete should be permitted to use the substance, but he/she should be tested to insure that the substance is only being used in the quantities that are needed to treat the health problem. 3) The athlete must disclose the use of the substance to the governing boards so that items 1 and 2 can be enforced. The Disease The health problems you have listed - life span, general mental and physical health, heart disease, cancers, Alzheimer's disease - are all closely tied to the aging process. And that raises another troublesome problem: The medical community, in general, does not currently classify the aging process as a disease (unless it occurs very rapidly, as in progeria). But there seems to be no intelligent rationale for this attitude. I have never seen a comprehensive definition of the word "disease" that would not be satisfied by the aging process, and suspect that this attitude exists because the medical community, historically, has had no prophylaxis, no cure, and woefully few treatments for ordinary geria (or, for that matter, for progeria). The attitude may stem, in part, from a purely practical feeling that there is no point in calling something a disease if you can't do anything about it. But it may also be a form of denial. After all, if you were a doctor, would you find it comfortable to admit that, in spite of all your medical wisdom and all the diseases you can treat effectively, there remains one disease that is insidious, debilitating, disfiguring, and always fatal, that afflicts 100% of the population (unless they die first from something else), and that you can do almost nothing about it? Once you recognize that the aging process is a disease, then it makes perfect sense that athletes should be able to take medications to treat it, and that this should not bar them from competition (any more than, e.g., a diabetic who takes insulin or a diabetes drug should be barred from competition). Bob