Professional sports organizations work hard to present competitions as free from all unnatural influences. But how true is this?
How many professional athletes are benefiting right now from bioengineered improvements to their immune systems and complex chemical substances in their food? How many of them have modified the very water they drink, adding to it biological properties that no substance in nature has?
All of them. And, for that matter, you too.
- The water you drink or even just cook with has artificially high levels of fluoride, greatly enhancing your dental health (which has been found to influence the general health of your organism).
- There are extra chemical compounds in common foodstuff, including ‘natural’ ones like milk and bread. Examples are iron, folic acid, and other vitamins.
- And let’s not forget the bioengineered viruses or virus protein fragments that were injected into your bloodstream or orally taken to reprogram your immune system (the common term for this procedure is, of course, ‘vaccination’).
It’s no accident that, on average, we are taller, stronger, smarter, and more longevous that previous centuries. In great part, this is because we routinely engineer everything we eat, stimulate our minds and bodies with concentrated 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine (caffeine), and alter our bodies from birth with artificial procedures like vaccination, antibiotics, blood exams, and vitamin supplements. The small kid playing in a park has behind him an army of laboratories, scientists, doctors, and industrial chemists without whom, if we are to judge from history, his chances of being as healthy as he is, or even alive, would have been much reduced.
There is then no ‘purity’ to save in sports. A competition between a modern athlete and, say, one from the age of Pericles would never be fair, because the contemporary athlete — not only by virtue of being an athlete, but because of being contemporary — has already been improved by an array of technologies that didn’t exist decades, not to say centuries, ago. The distinction between ‘unsporting doping’ (the use of chemical and biotechnological improvements to the organism) and ‘basic health rights’ (also the use of chemical and biotechnological improvements to the organism) is completely arbitrary and inconsistent.
It’s also dangerous. By issuing blanket prohibitions that have little to do with safety concerns, sports authorities push athletes towards the illegal, and thus less monitored and more dangerous, use of these resources. They have little or no choice, as they cannot be competitive without them. But could you be competitive in a sport if you have never taken vitamins or an antibiotic during your entire life? Making testing and research illegal by itself, sports authorities are taking away critical information that athletes need, and unnecessarily risking their lives.
Micromanaging through arbitrary rules is both inefficient and dangerous. There should be a simple rule: whatever has been deemed safe by a group like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be legal in a sports competition, and anything that hasn’t been deemed safe should be forbidden. It doesn’t fall to the International Olympic Committee, or any other organization, to take any more detailed decision for the athletes.
- Won’t this favor the teams and athletes with the most financial resources? This is already the case. Banning some options hasn’t solved this problem, and will never do.
- Won’t this render people with talent but no access to enhancements unable to compete? People with talent will be spotted anyway, and given the necessary tools. Just as it happens right now every day, in every sport.
- Won’t it ‘taint’ sports? No. The purity of sport lies in trying your best and following the rules of the game, not in some illusory and arbitrary idea of what training and tools are proper for an athlete.
If we care about sports, and about the lives and well-being of those who have dedicated their lives to them, then we should focus our regulations and tests not in what enhances performance or doesn’t, but on what harms people. To do otherwise is to sacrifice lives to a romantic idea of a purity that never was.
IEET Blog