What is your opinion of pro athletes using steroids to improve their performance?

Performance enhancing drugs really defeat the purpose pro athletics, making it more a question of financing over natural ability.

I don’t see a recourse other than nullifying their records. They cheated, were caught., and therefor are losers.

Honestly, I have no issue with it. When you’re paying someone millions of dollars to perform then you’ve got to expect that they’re going to do whatever they can to perform at their maximum level. Plus pro sports have always been dirty. People worry about the purity of a game that was never pure to begin with.

@Darth_Algar : Many thanks for your excellent response – I would not have expected anything else.

Cheating scum, may their names be erased from the sporting arena forever.

I am strongly opposed. Far too many health risks involved, not to mention unfair advantage in relation to dominance and appearance. Use them at your own risk. If having the edge means you are willing to potentially die an early death from liver toxicity, heart problems etc. then proceed at your own risk.

@Coloma : You’re absolutely right.

@AndrewThan35 I’m also a horsewoman and we have performance cutting horses, I have seen some terrible things happen to beautiful horses that have been given steroids as well. Bad news and inhumane for man and beast. Plenty of unscrupulous vets as well as MD’s. out there that will do anything.

I am opposed to it. If athlete A can’t beat athlete B without steroids, then athlete A just doesn’t make the cut, IMO.

Rule of Acquisition #181
”Not even dishonesty can tarnish the shine of profit.”
#189
”Let others keep their reputation. You keep their money.”
#192
”Never cheat a Klingon… unless you’re sure you can get away with it.”
#239
”Never be afraid to mislabel a product.”
#261
”A wealthy man can afford anything except a conscience.”
#266
”When in doubt, lie.”
#285
”No good deed ever goes unpunished.”

There was a pertinent article today by Rick Telander in the Sun Times about the lack of votes to put Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire into the Hall of Fame

I like this comment.

Telander: “I’ll never vote for players I have judged to be cheaters. (Unless there’s a ’roider exhibit in Cooperstown.)”

Link

If Gaylord Perry is in Cooperstown then there’s no reason whatsoever that McGuire, Sosa and Bonds shouldn’t be.

what kind of parents name their child “gaylord”?

I disprove of it because I consider it as cheating. Rely on natural athletic ability, not some fake steroid induced performance. Most cheaters get caught, go through the court of public opinion, lose favorability, and forever become losers in the eyes of many people.

Does anyone seriously think there hasn’t always been the use of drugs to enhance performance in professional sports?

I don’t believe anyone has suggested that, @Darth_Algar.

So then why is it a big deal now?

It’s always been a big deal.

@Dutchess_III

No, it really hasn’t. Nobody much cared, back in the day, when all the players were popping “greenies” (amphetamines) all during the game. Or even more recently when McGuire and Sosa where engaged in their home run race. Everybody knew they were juicing. Nobody gave a shit because they were putting asses in the seats. It was only after they retired (and thus were no longer putting asses in seats) they everyone started to made it out to be this terrible thing.

Last I checked, those who used steroids didn’t turn into hyenas or goldfish; they are still human. However, our concept of “fair play” came about LONG before we ever had the concept of the idea of human enhancement. I think auto racing has the best compromise; different classes for stock and modified. The purists can go with stock, and those that want to go to the limits of what is humanly possible can go with modified…. though we will have to amend even that once cybernetics become a thing.

@prairierose If we are to go by sheer natural ability, then shoes that give better traction than bare feet are cheating at running. How far are you wanting to go down that road considering how many professional athletes use specialized gear to give themselves an advantage over those that have inferior equipment?

I remember flaps about it in the 70’s.

But they could all buy the same shoes, @jerv. If there is one specific shoe that has the best traction, they’d be silly not to wear them.

Maybe you remember flaps about it, but no one’s calling for Hank Aaron’s record to be stricken despite his admitted use of them.

I’m all flapped out, I’ll just watch this debate unfold with my Shock Top. lol

remember when fred phelps broke several world records in 2008?
no way he did not inject himself with litres of dope to do that.

Is somebody asking for someones record to be stricken?

@Dutchess_III

Yes, that’s a pretty common suggestion. It’s even been suggested in this thread once already.

And on a related note…

@jerv The OP question was about steroid use that is how I answered the question. I was speaking of steroid use as specified in my answer. Being a doper and wearing special shoes are completely different subjects.

Has it actually happened?

Back in the day people really let things slide. Cops were more lenient, laws were more lenient. Hell, we even had a smoking area for us underage kids in our high school! People are just more passionate today, I guess.

Of course they are @prairierose. You have to read it in context, starting here

Breaking news: Chess grandmaster smacked out of his head during tournamemt…no one cared.

It’s true that drug cheats have been polluting sports for decades, I go back to Ben Johnson at the Seoul Olympics & Marco Pantani in the Tour De France/Giro D’Italia.
Cheating bastards then I view the same as cheating bastards now, bury their records & bury them deep.

A bit off topic, but does anyone but me wonder if the OP was Bendrew?

@Dutchess_III No, I think it’s a jelly who has already been banned multiple times.
“Thank you in advance for your answers”

At one time I was against it, but as @Darth_Algar (yeah, the 1st time in 2015 we agree, how scary is that) they are going to do whatever to keep the millions flowing into their bank account. With all those toss ups to buy trinkets for, and the insurance on that fleet of Ferraris they can’t afford to lose any endorsements. ~~ I am not against it, I see it no different than a nation or sports organization with deep pockets that can equip its athletes with hi-tech shark suits that make them slip through water faster than that poor schlep from Guiana, Chad, or Ecuador who can’t afford that; are they not at a disadvantage having to race against those who have? Enhancing drugs is maybe their only cheap way to equalize the competition.

Oh….But he asks some good questions. Why does he keep getting banned?

@ragingloli

“remember when fred phelps broke several world records in 2008?
no way he did not inject himself with litres of dope to do that.”

Do you think Phelps took dope to give him an unfair advantage over other homophobes? ;-)

@Dutchess_III In auto racing, there are certain series where every car is the same. Some of them don’t even let the teams touch the cars at all except during an actual race; Parc fermé is in full effect.

However, there are other series where limited tuning/mods are allowed. For instance, some series must use an unmodified engine block, the only modification allowed to the frame/bodywork is the installation of safety equipment (roll cage, replace the gas tank with a fuel cell…), but they can do things like change the intake and exhaust systems, tires, and shocks.

Also, one common thing is “homologation” where a certain number of regular cars must be sold before a particular car is allowed to compete. How it works is that a carmaker wants an advantage over it’s competition, so they make a better street car, sell a few thousand of them, then that “modified” car is considered “stock” because anyone with the money can go buy one right off the showroom floor. I mention homologation as it’s a method used to redefine “stock”.

How all that car-talk to athletes and doping is simple to me. In this age where what used to be science fiction is now science fact, we will soon have to grapple with the definition of “human” just as the sanctioning bodies of various types of autoracing grapple with the definition of “stock”. In fact, we’re already having a little bit of that issue now. Is Oscar Pistorius human?

Substitute “womb” for “assembly line”, and the parallels become more clear; both cars and people can be modified. Maybe it’s time that athletic rules adapt to changes in technology, just as gun laws have had to adapt to full-auto weapons with armor-piercing rounds; something that was not only non-existent, but totally inconceivable in the late-1700s when the Second Amendment was written. I’m pretty sure the Greeks had no concept of steroids or prosthetics around 776 BC either.

@prairierose Both modify humans. And while some people are naturally born with more or less of certain types of hormones, I cannot think of any case in history where a baby was born with shoes. To my mind, they are the same.

Also, humans are a tool-using species. Our tool use, intellect, and ability to make dramatic changes to nature practically define our species. It could be argued that not allowing doping is depriving humanity of, well, humanity.

My point is that, unless you compete EXACTLY as you came out of the womb, you leave the realm of “No enhancements allowed!” and enter the realm of “Where do we draw the line?”; a discussion that could go on for a long, long, long, long, long, long, time with no guarantee of agreement at the end.

@Hypocrisy_Central Precisely! Ban First-world athletes from world competition!

* * * *

One thing both of you (and a few others here) are missing is that the entire point of the rules isn’t purity, but to maintain a level playing field. If everyone is allowed to dope, and everyone does dope, who has an unfair advantage then?

Most of the arguments I’ve heard against human enhancement are more a matter of ethics in medicine than about fairness in competition. If you all want fairness, then only clones with identical nutrition and training regiments should be allowed to compete. Genetic diversity provides some with unfair advantages like more muscles or better cardiovascular systems to oxygenate the body in much the same way steroids and blood doping do… but it’s okay because it’s natural?!?! Sorry, but that sounds more like religion than an objective quest for equality.

My only opinion as someone who isn’t interested in sports, is that it’s sad it has to be this way. It’s always about money whether we’re covering up drug use or domestic violence.

Sports is fun and cool but it seems like some ingrained system of “do whatever it takes for the money”.

I think someone is missing the point entirely, sure, have a doped up, fabricated sporting event where all paticipants gain results/performance through fake means. I have no issue with that, so long as they understand that no one will take them seriously. Sports fans/sponsors/TV, far from it, they will be rightly ridiculed as a pathetic circus act, unable to compete through hard work & talent, a fool’s paradise.
Sporting prowess is all about natural progression, pushing the human body beyond its limits which can only be genuinely achieved through clean & honest methods.

It’s pure and simple cheating. Sport should be about a competition between athletes, not a competition between biochemists using athletes as proxies. As such, athletes should compete on the basis of their training only.

@ucme We have “clean” athletes running a mile in under 4 minutes; something that was unheard of until 1954 even for Olympic athletes. Now we have “clean” high school kids and men over 40 doing it. Think about the implications there for a moment; whether through evolution, training, or better nutrition, the human body itself has already changed, and I doubt it’s evolution as that take more generations than have passed in the last sixty years.

Therefore, just being alive now as opposed to 50–60 years ago is unclean, dishonest, too fake to be taken seriously, and should be ridiculed as a pathetic circus act. Human performance has been artificially enhanced; it must be artificial since, as I said, evolution doesn’t work that fast.

@FireMadeFlesh And their genetics. It won’t be long before that can be altered too, either before or after birth. Hell, we already used eugenics in horse racing, therefore gene-tweaking human athletes is fair game unless you want double standards.
Also, you are arguing that managers and coaches are unfair; it should be the athletes doing it all instead of someone else using athletes as proxies.

@jerv I stand by my original answer which answered the original question.

@jerv I think maybe you’re a Steve Austin fan…“we can rebuild him”

Give me a ‘hell yeah’!

@Darth_Algar
Someone should shop a cock into his hand.

@ragingloli

I’m sure that’s out there somewhere. This is the internet afterall.

I meant the $6 million Austin, not the camp, play wrestling pussy.

Yes, we’re well aware of who you meant. There’s not a single person in the western world who doesn’t get “we can rebuild him”.

I didn’t get it.

Who the hell is Laura Dern?

Yes, i’m more than aware that “we” (whoever they are) knew who I meant.
I used it as a means to take the piss outta the pussyboy play fighter..do keep up old man.

Laua Dern? Well, she’s the daughter of a pretty famous actor from the 60’s and 70’s, Bruce Dern, who played in lots of American Westerns. She’s an actress too.
Why do you ask, @ragingloli?

That was a reference to Redlettermedia’s Jack Packard.

@ucme Nope. Too cheesy. I’m a bit more of a realist than either WWE or any ‘70s TV show. However, I am a Transhumanist cyberpunk . I believe our society is headed towards a corporate-run dystopia while our species will soon start to modify itself the way we’ve altered our environment. Think a little like Bladerunnner only with more of the human enhancements we have already.

With your attitude on sports, I must ask if you consider people with prosthetic limbs or cochlear implants to be “cheating at life”. If you have ever had a vaccincation, you have modified your biology in ways that give you an unfair advantage over many other humans; look at how many people in Third World nations die of diseases where bioscience has altered our immune systems. Even the fact that you are on the internet proves that you are a bit of a transhumanist as you are part of a hive mind leading our species towards informational singularity. I see a double standard there that I find honestly confusing.

BTW, I’m not saying you’re wrong, merely stating why I not only strongly disagree, but why (in some ways) I cannot even understand your view. I’m here for a discussion, not a fight.

@jerv Oh I know you’re not saying i’m wrong, that would be because i’m not & a fight is as tedious as it is unnecessary. One issue I see arising over any discussion we may have though, is this, reading through your last post, I find myself as confused as a confused thing from confused town.
We are so far apart as to be diametrically opposed on the subject, probably best to agree to disagree & move on.
We do however share some common ground when it comes to The Bionic Bastard, way too cheesy :)

@ucme The ‘70s and ‘80s TV was notorious for that. The classic, intentionally-campy Batman series looked like high theater by comparison. He may have been “the Six Million dollar man”, but I think that the entire five-season run of the show may have had a production budget of less than that.
As a comical aside, one of the RPGs I play had a sidebar in one of their books with the heading, “Who is Steve Austin?”, and the first sentence of that sidebar basically read, “If anyone says, ‘A man, barely alive…’, hit them in the head with this book.”, as they were actually referring to Steve Austin.

@jerv I don’t believe the comparison extends that far. Altering genetics through breeding is fair game, since that is how life works. But humans don’t generally have kids as part of a breeding program. Artificial selection of genes is off limits though, since it is artificial enhancement. Coaches and managers are there to help an athlete reach their natural potential – not exceed it. There is a big fat red line between improving the athlete’s diet, and feeding them chemically synthesised drugs. If one were to allow steroids, then we might as well allow hydraulic exoskeletons once the technology catches up.

@FireMadeFlesh Generally speaking, eugenics programs don’t last long enough to even get to a second generation, so you are correct there. However, artificial selection of genes may become problematic in the future… and possibly the relatively near future. Suppose for the sake of argument that there were a gene therapy to cure cancer, but it had the effect of altering DNA just enough to pass it on to one’s offspring, and their offspring… great, now we have an entire lineage (a number that will grow exponentially with each generation) that is utterly ineligible for sports!

Improving the athlete’s diet…. looking at things like GMO foods, I think it best if we just stay out of that minefield and say that that would exclude pretty much the entire human race at this point, partly for reasons stated above. Suffice it to say, “natural potential” is a moving goalpost even without the sort of cyberware and genemods that are currently still on the horizon.

Exoskeletons are out, for much the same reason as swimmers can’t use fins, but prosthetics (surgical replacement parts, as opposed to equipment) are already being debated. Regardless, it’s something that does need to be considered, and we already have started. Personally, I think that the only fair way is to use a class system like the Paralympics have as an outright ban would be discriminatory as all hell, but that’s just my opinion. I don’t want to see Mr. Natural competing against the T-800 either, but I don’t want to ban cyborgs from sports either; Alex Murphy is still human.

Neither the T-800 nor Robocop were actually fast.

@ragingloli Robocop was slow, but the T-800 was capable of 22 MPH, so capable of a three-minute mile. And the endurance was ridiculous, so it’d keep that speed for an entire marathon without any problems; about 1:11.4 for the whole thing.

I do not remember the arninator ever running that fast on screen

@jerv I would accept gene therapy for health reasons, but a distinction must be drawn between health and performance. Tricky, I know.

For example, beta blockers are banned substances for racing drivers. They slow a person’s heart rate, and allow them to make calm, decisive judgements. However if the person has an underlying heart condition that requires them to take beta blockers, they are given an exemption. The same could work with gene therapy – gene modification to treat cystic fibrosis would obviously be in, but gene modification to increase muscle bulk or composition would be out unless there was a medical requirement, such as muscular dystrophy.

I highly recommend The Case Against Perfection on this topic. I didn’t entirely agree with the book, but it provided a great deal of clarity to the discussion.

@FireMadeFlesh Yes, quite tricky. But that still doesn’t change my opinion that it’s not as simple as, “Ban the intentionally altered from competition!”.

In return, I have a few dozen things I would like to recommend that broach this topic, but it’d be tedious to list them all. See, I read quite a bit of sci-fi, much of it in the Cyberpunk genre, though also including Bruce Sterling’s “Shaper/Mechanist” stories where humanity is highly polarized between “Shapers” who favor genetic modifications and “Mechanists” who favor cybernetic augmentation, sometimes to the point of full cyborg conversion.

Then there is Transhuman Space, which doesn’t have much cyberware as that setting is more into genefixing, parahumans, bioroids, and the occasional infomorph or “uplifted” animal. Compared to making a bioroid, it’s trivial to enable same-sex couples to have children that have the genes of both parents or to erase genetic defects…though the definition of “defect” is rather variable depending on the beleif system of the parents. And we can’t forget Gattaca.

The best I can think of right now probably would be Shadowrun, an RPG I’ve enjoyed since it came out and that now has over a quarter of a century of refinement and addition to it’s storyline. The detail they put into the writing of the world 60 years into the future also provides a bit of clarity; through the dozens of sourcebooks across 5 editions, plus over 50 novels, they go into great detail about how society has handled (or, in some cases, has refused to handle) some pretty drastic changes in the world that have raised questions about the definition of “human”, including exactly how professional sports has dealt with all manners of enhancement.

There is also a relevant episode of House that is more current-day if you aren’t up for reading a few shelves worth of books. But I think by now you probably understand that I’ve been exposed to this very issue for a few decades, and had more than a few sources of information to base an opinion on.

@jerv Oh I understood right from your initial response that you’ve developed a well informed attitude to this issue. I just cannot agree. But I’m a Luddite like that – I find the prospect of altering humans through technology disconcerting, however inevitable it appears to be.

@FireMadeFlesh I find it slightly troubling in that, like you, I feel there is a line somewhere beyond which one is no longer human. I just place that line considerably further away than you do.

@jerv I liked the way Charles Stross characterised it in his book Accelerando. Humans could have implant mediated augmented intelligence, upload themselves as AI, and at one point even as a flock of birds. But these people were still considered human. Their descendants weren’t though, because the nature of their thought was so radically different.

@FireMadeFlesh Sounds like “Infomorphs” from Transhuman Space. In TS though, whether an infomorph that originated from a brainscan of a human is itself considered human, property, or abomination is variable by jurisdiction; you may be a citizen in some places, an animal in others, and terminated “for the good of society” in yet others. Biochauvinism is common, and morphological freedom is not guaranteed, though in “Fifth wave” nations (the most affluent and advanced, analogous to “First World” in modern times) it’s uncommon to see someone who isn’t at least genefixed, if not upgraded.

@jerv I fear you’ve just pushed the length of my reading list past the 12 month mark. I’m going to need a new bookshelf soon!

Relevant