Ethical Dilemmas : Performance Enhancing Drugs

My moral dilemma is about the use of steroids with professional athletes. Steroids are a family of hormones related to testosterone. They have been used by many athletes, including nonprofessional and professional as boost to give them an advantage in the game. As of right now, steroids are banned from all professional sports. Those who cheat and use steroids, may be banned from the game. Lance Armstrong, a former cyclists, was recently caught using steroids. His Fame and glory soon came to a troubling end. However, they build body muscle. Short term use can be beneficial for many. They can also be beneficial for many medical purposes. Some of best baseball players ever used steroids. Although this sounds good, steroids have downsides as well.

A scandal broke in 2013 over the Cronulla Sharks concerning the administration of performance enhancing drugs to players during 2011-2012. Some of the ethical and corporate government issues associated with the clubs actions will be explored in the following case study.

A number of prominent athletes have recently experienced a 'fall from grace,' because of the revelation that they used performance-enhancing drugs. Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon is Lance Armstrong. In an advertisement for Nike that his former sponsor now no doubt regrets, Armstrong is shown asking the viewer "what am I on? I'm on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day." Professional cycling is often cited as one of the sports in which doping is most endemic to its subculture, however a number of professional sports have been embroiled in drug scandals. Because of the many revelations about the number of baseball players who used steroids to get their record-breaking statistics, the 1990s are often called the 'steroid' era of baseball. The Olympic track and field star Marian Jones was stripped of her medals, after finally admitting to the use of performance-enhancing drugs (Lardon 2008). "Despite the health risks, and despite the regulating bodies' attempts to eliminate drugs from sport, the use of illegal substances is widely known to be rife. It hardly raises an eyebrow now when some famous athlete fails a dope test" (Savulescu, Foddy, & Clayton 2004).

Ethical dilemmas are something that almost every person will face at various times in their life. Often, even more than once. We were born sinners, so there are times people, even though knowing right from wrong, struggle with making the right decision. How a person works through the dilemmas they face are considerably influenced by their worldview. In this paper, we will look at the ethical dilemma a student faces when confronted with performance enhancing drugs, Christian worldview beliefs, and how different worldviews may handle the same dilemma.

These days it seems as society is constantly being faced with Ethical Dilemmas. Whether it is normal everyday citizens, actors, business executives, and even athletes. The way that every person deal with ethical dilemmas is by relying on their worldview. The world of professional sports is a very tough and competitive place. It is full of top level athletes that are masters in their respective sports and the struggle that they all face is to be better than everyone else. With all these athletes working hard and looking for new ways to better themselves, some take the easy way over the right way. In this paper, the ethical dilemma of performance enhancing drugs being used in sports will be addressed

For many years sports have played huge roles in human’s everyday lives. From entertainment, political, financial and to actually competing in them. The task for the sportsmen or women, especially in the top rank, is to beat the other competitors and get a good result from it. Here there is a high amount of pressure on many athletes coming from the media, coaches, themselves etc. They have the wanting to do well and achieve their goals and aims so much that some of the athletes turn to performance enhancing drugs. Obviously training for competition is the main thing to do but using drugs is another helper to succeeding. So, to their way of thinking, doping does not seem like cheating it just seems like

“Commentators claim that performance-enhancing drugs are not right or wrong, simply another strategy to improve performance” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing Drugs). There are two main problems wrong with the use of drugs being legal. Health of athletes would drop devastatingly, and the true competition would become who gets lucky. “Some mourn the loss of yesterday's baseball heroes, while others argue that sport figures who use performance-enhancing drugs expose flaws in American culture” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing

The desire to compete — and win — is as old as history itself. From the beginnings of sport, athletes have sought out foods and potions to turn their bodies into winning machines. As early as 776 BCE, the very first Olympic games, there are records of attempts to increase testosterone levels (“Steroid Abuse in Sports”). Ancient Greek wrestlers ate vast amounts of meat to gain muscle mass, and Norse “Berserker” warriors took hallucinogenic mushrooms before battle. The first competitive athletes to be charged for doping, however, were swimmers in 1860s Amsterdam. Doping of all kinds, from caffeine to cocaine to anabolics quickly spread to other sports (“Anabolic Steroids, a Brief History”).

Famed writer Grantland Rice once wrote, “When the great scorer comes to mark against your name. He'll mark not won or lost but how you played the game” (World of quotes, 1). That buoyant attitude of selflessness and heart has slowly diminished throughout the course of time. Now, George Allen’s booming voice, former coach of the Washington Redskins, runs throughout head of America, “Only winners are truly alive. Winning is living. Every time you win, you’re reborn. When you lose, you die a little” (Harris, 67). It is with this frame of mind that athletes are pushed beyond the edge of reason. Although peer pressure and pressure from coaches are central reasons why one may use steroids, most users begin using in order to improve their self image or excel in sports. Ethics, integrity, and legality aside, some athletes will stop at nothing to attain “that extra edge”.

Professional sports are a competition between the greatest athletes in the world. And when I go to a game, that’s exactly what I expect to see. Sports are entertainment. There is no room for purity and respecting the limits that athletes had in the past. Modern athletes should utilize all the resources that they have available to them. This includes steroids, which enhance an athlete’s performance. After all, performance is what really matters.

Every athlete has wished they could jump a little higher, swim a little longer and run a little faster. Throughout the history of sport there have been accounts of chemical enhancements taken by athletes to give them this advantage. This has developed more as time has taken its grasp on modern medicinal practices. People try to obey the laws of a pure sport, yet there seems to be an increasing margin of those who “dope” and get away with it and the small group those that does not, how does this still happen? Is the solution to just allow doping? While with so much speculation and ethically derivative rhetoric to be examined, doping to increase strength in a sport is explicitly wrong to the sport itself. Chemical enhancements discredit the integrity

Doping has widely become known as the use of banned substances and practices by sports personnel particularly athletes in an attempt to improve sporting performances. No sensible fan of sport today denies the prevalence of drugs in virtually every major sport, yet none would argue they can ever be eliminated completely. Money alone would seem to guarantee that much. High profile athletes today are competing for high stakes, not just millions, but dozens of millions. The fear of losing everything career, opportunity, contracts, name, fame, and money is pushing more sportsmen all over the world to use performance enhancing drugs, mainly

This is a material world promoting material values, thus meaning that it should not be surprising to see individuals being willing to do everything in their power in order to make profits. Or should it? The sports community today is troubled by a series of athletes who have yielded to society's pressures and abandoned their principles with the purpose of taking performance enhancing drugs. It is difficult to determine if it would be normal for the masses to judge these individuals, concerning that they are actually one of the reasons for which these people have come to consider taking performance enhancing drugs in the first place. However, the only ones who can judge them are other hard-working sportspersons who have stood by their principles and who respect the idea of sport in general.

Many people believe that drug use in professional athletics is not a serious problem, however it is more widespread and serious than people think. In professional athletics the use of drugs is looked upon as somewhat of a serious problem, but is also very discrete and low key. Every once in a while one might see a prominent figure in a certain sport being reprimanded for the use of some outlawed drug, however this is just one of the many who happened to get caught. Athletes today seem to find no moral problem with using performance-enhancing drugs, or in other words cheating. Also many of them feel that because they are "stars" there should be no repercussions for their illegal activity.

More and more, of our society views winning more important than itself. Success in competition brings status, popularity, and fame, not to mention college scholarships. Today’s athletes are looking for an advantage over the competition that will make them winners. Unfortunately, the drugs of today are caught up in the high stakes competition frenzy. Of this reality, teenage use of performance improved drugs is growing ever more popular. In colleges and in the professional league a lot of people are doing drugs and its ruining their health and life. Also, if some teenagers take performance drugs they are making them better than everyone else giving themselves an advantage over everyone else which is cheating, so why should they get money