[MaxScheiber]

I don't necessarily have a problem with professional athletes doping in a black box, i.e. free of influencing others. Professionals should be fully aware of the health effects of "riding the bicycle," and it's hard for me to argue against telling people what they can do to their own bodies.

I always thought, however, that the big issue with steroids was the role that athletes play in the lives of children and teenagers. It's really not okay for high school athletes to use steroids. I was under the impression that professional athletes using steroids influences budding athletes to use steroids both directly ("I can get to where Barry Bonds is by using steroids") and indirectly (feeling pressured to use PEDs in order to compete). I seem to remember this being a controversial topic in the news 10-15 years ago.

Steroid use in professional bodybuilding isn't as big of a deal as steroid use in professional sports. While part of that is attributable to the goals of those respective fields, another part is attributable to bodybuilders not being widespread role models in the way that baseball or basketball players are.

[Floegipoky]

I don't buy the 'think of the children!' argument for a second. If a person wants to use, they're going to use, regardless of what drug or their age. What really causes problems is all the lies, misinformation, and unrealistic expectations about what they can achieve with or without drugs. People think that the drugs are magic and will close the gaps in their training. It really is all about training- as the article says, the drugs are used because the human body isn't able to recover quickly enough from the volume of training required of professional athletes; in most sports it has nothing to do with adding more muscle. In fact most athletes don't want to add muscle willy-nilly because it makes it harder to move. If professional athletes were able to honestly discuss the drugs that they use and their dosages I think it would make things safer for young athletes, because most people don't understand how low the dosages that they take are and it would PROVE that you can't replace hard training with drugs. There are young athletes now taking dosages that far exceed what even world class athletes would consider because there's no honest discussion around them, they can't make informed decisions.

Tl;dr: Hiding information never makes people safer. If Barry Bonds published his training program and drug stack, nobody would ever be stupid enough to think that "I can get to where Barry Bonds is by using steroids"; instead it would prove that the only way to compete with Barry Bonds is to train your ass off.

[z3t4]

Low dosage will have a placebo effect, at best. Good nutrition and sleep is far more effective.

Ask anyone with a lot of experience (20 years of usage) and he/she will tell you that it's not worth it! (unless there's a monetary incentive).

Elite athletics (15+ training sessions/week) is not healthy, and we do not want to make it even more unhealthy by allowing athletes to train even harder.

[cromulent]

I tried to find the original reasoning for banning doping and couldn't do so. According to Wikipedia the IOC banned doping in the 1960s after some sports federations began to do so. It was widespread at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Olympic_Games#Re...

Could it be simply part of a conservative response to drug-taking in the 1960's? Reefer madness? I don't know.

Please comment if you can find a source. If we know the original reasoning, then it would be good to critique it 50 years later.

[kmnc]

I imagine the original reasoning was mostly due to the notion that "it is against the competitive spirit and destroys the integrity of the game". Honestly that is still the best reasoning for banning doping in my opinion. Maybe it is just personal opinion but doping in baseball almost destroyed the sport because of a tarnished reputation. If I knew doping was allowed in say gymnastics for example I wouldn't watch it at all, it would become boring. Sure, I am likely overvaluing the effects of doping in gaining an advantage but I think the biggest problem is that of attribution.

How do I correctly attribute skill to a player I know is doping, or a sport that is full of doping? If we ever get to the point where sports radio is filled with discussions about "Well, this guy is really good but Jordan didn't have XZ-87 injected into his body so you know how can we compare them?" then I think the integrity of sports is simply dead. Maybe sports become something else and we are all fine with it but in my opinion doping destroys the integrity and spirit of sports and that is still the best argument against it.

[nosideeffects]

Drugs don't increase "skill," though. And on the contrary, if everyone was doping I think the event might actually be more interesting to watch since the average fitness of the players would be increased.

[irishcoffee]

I don't have a source, but possibly a rationale you might agree with: It tarnishes records.

Mark McGuire destroyed the home run record, and then it was discovered he was using juice. Would he have broken it either way? Maybe, we'll never know.

You can argue that baseball stadiums shape changes over time, bat technology changes, we learn more about nutrition and training, etc. and they're valid points. That should be how records are broken naturally. It diminishes the achievement, to me, when those before you did it naturally, and you did not.

Would lance have won that many tours, and in a row? Maybe, but now we'll never know, and its a record that may never be broken naturally. Yes, I realize its not actually an official record anymore.

[basseq]

> ... it's hard for me to argue against telling people what they can do to their own bodies.

This isn't a broad dictation, though. This is athlete governing agencies working to protect the "purity" of sport. Participating in those associations means you follow their rules: don't want to follow their rules? Don't join.

You're more than welcome to start a competitor to Union Cycliste Internationale and announce that doping in your sponsored events is allowed. But in this group, you're required to dope (to be competitive). And now you're back to effectively telling people what to do to their own bodies.

> It's really not okay for high school athletes to use steroids.

At what point do we transition from "not ok" to "people can do what they want to their own bodies"? Age 18? What about parents who authorize plastic surgery for their 16 year olds—can they authorize doping regimens, too?

So then we're back to standards and sports governing bodies. The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) says "no steroids". NFL/NBA/etc. says "A-OK". What about NCAA?

We can draw the line that says, "steroids for professionals only", but that sets up a chicken-or-egg scenario. To play on a professional level, you have to dope, but to dope, you have to play on a professional level. How does one become a professional, then?

[jsalit]

There's no such thing as doping without influencing others; the indirect influences alone affect the economics of the sport.

[nostrebored]

Exactly, you shift the goalpost for attainable performance and the minimal performance necessary to be professional. A good example of this is e-sports, where it's well known, especially among FPS players that people competing are using stimulants -- and this has been the status quo for more than a decade. Which might be neutral, if things like steroids/stimulants weren't so terrible for you, but they have noticable consequences for your health.

[dhimes]

Certainly influence on the young is part of it, but it's also a matter of keeping the sport at a level that everybody agrees to and understands. In some sports, doping is accepted- there are separate leagues for natural athletes. So my only issue is that if everybody agreed to not dope, and the understanding is that the athletes are clean, yet some dope, then those who are doping are cheating.

If everybody agrees that doping is ok, and it is the understanding of the participants that to compete you have to dope, then I'm fine with it.

To me, it's really about your relationship to the other competitors more than the horrors your actions may inflict on society.

We see something similar in academia. There are performance-enhancing drugs that academics can take to have greater periods of intense work, and out-compete their competitors. It's up to the academics to set the standard for what is acceptable.

[joe_the_user]

It's not just the children but anyone outside the realm of a "pure competitor" who winds-up harmed unfairly by doping.

The average professional cycling or the average professional American football player is not wealthy and is not competing purely for the love of the sport. Rather, they are only moderately well-paid, not terribly likely to reach the true big time and working extremely hard just to stay in the game. Often they come from impoverished backgrounds and view sports as their way out (and often it isn't). Essentially, competition is their work. It's fairly morally repugnant to create a work-environment that impels someone to use dangerous drugs just to literally stay in the game. It's not as bad as the factory owner that dopes his workers with speed to improve production but it's headed in a similar exploitative direction.

[alasdair_]

I am not quite clear what the difference is between your examples and, say, startup CEOs who choose to use stimulants to deal with a crushing workload.

Or, ignoring drugs, every professional boxer runs a risk of long term brain damage, yet they still choose to do it, despite most of them meeting your criteria of not being especially wealthy/ solely doing it for love of the sport.