Say No to Doping!

In sports, the competitive drive to win can be very intensive between athletes. Winning in the game usually brings rewards to athletes both financially and psychologically. Such temptations and the consecutive pressures faced by athletes to excel in the sporting events, attempts to achieve a rival edge especially when the application of performance enhancing drugs by athletes in sports activities has becoming a new trend and relatively common. Performance enhancing drugs are used so athletes could achieve better results with least efforts, even as their health and their athletic careers will be placed in danger. That explains why athletes, sports people and body builders turn to performanc enhancing drugs.

A win is a win no matter what. However, it is how it is achieved that makes the difference. When it comes to sports, it is either hard working, making use of a special talent or a brilliant tactic that can win you a game, but is it really ethical for a win to be achieved with the aid of steroids? The article “Is Doping Wrong?” published in August 2007 by the Australian professor in ethics and the current Ira W. DeCamp of Bioethics at Princeton University, Peter Singer, discusses the debatable aspect of whether the use of drugs by professional athletes should be permitted or not. Despite his illogical arguments and fallacies at some points, Singer was able to portray his ideas in a coherent and organized way. Therefore, I would recommend this article to the Writing 101 students, as it would teach them how to display their ideas in a well-organized and consistent manner, in addition to learning how to avoid the use of some specific fallacies.

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

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”).

Knowing wrong from right seems to be a harder and harder concept for people to grasp. As the American culture wanders farther and farther from a Christian Worldview, so it seems America loses its grip on morals and ethics. In this paper, there will be an exploration of ethics in regards to performance enhancing drug use in athletes. Performance enhancing drugs should continue to be banned due to health risk factors, the element of cheating and abuse of the athlete 's body.

Doping in sports has caused a lot of controversy throughout the years in the sports world from youth sports to the professionals. The World Anti-Doping Agency does their best to catch all the drug users but falls short with some people. This causes for an “unfair” advantage and goes against the true value of sport. It can make these players stronger and more athletic which causes more excitement for the fans to watch, more revenue for teams, and growing popularity. Using performance-enhancing drugs is banned in almost every sport, but with the allowed use of them could bring to the players and the sports teams themselves, could outweigh the negative effects of them being used in sports.

No matter the sport, most athletes seek every competitive advantage to make it to the top. One of the main advantages is the performance athletes gain through drug use, and a big question today is the real purpose behind the drugs. Is an athlete truly just trying to enhance his or her performance to make it to the next level, or is there a deeper meaning, a problem with body image and how the public views these athletes, or a combination of both? According to an article on the Dilemmas of Doping, the rules in sports have two effects, “One is private: rules produce an entertaining game that generates private benefits for players, owners, and especially spectators. The other is social: rules tend to reward play that exhibits self-discipline, sacrifice for the good of the whole, and fair play.” ( qtd in Bird, Edward J and Gert G. Wagner). An athlete not only is rewarded by fair play, but winning without cheating, using drugs, etc. is the ultimate feeling of accomplishment. These athletes may have a sense that without stimulants they will never reach the top and feel like they have no other choice.

Nobody would argue that the quality of sports is basically dependent upon the level of skill of its players. As the skills of the players improve, so too does the quality of the game. So why are substances that would further athletes’ skills beyond human levels so ostracized? Doping is the practice of using steroids and other illegal substances to boost performance in sports and athletics. The debate of the morality of such substances has been going on for decades and continues to affect the world of sports in many ways. At the moment, steroids and all other performance-enhancing drugs are banned in their entirety from nearly all sports in most countries of the world. Scandalous lawsuits involving athletes abusing substances are constantly popping up, usually involving players and athletes that were considered fan-favorites or even heroes. Performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in sports because it would make it easier to control them, allow athletes to perform better, and widespread use of steroids would allow more solid research and advancements in the pharmaceutical field.

The reference explains how performance enhancing drugs diminish the idea of participation and promote ONLY winning, ruins the ‘spirit of sport’, pose severe health risks, promote unhealthy and dangerous behaviour, and questions the ethical issues of drug advertising/ sponsorship if doping were allowed in

They argue that performance enhancing drugs remove the morality and dignity within sport as the element of raw talent and skill disappears. Antidoping laws generally exist in order to provide a safe and fair environment for participation in sport (Allhoff 2009). These laws should prevent and protect athletes from subjecting themselves to health risks through the use of performance enhancing drugs. It is believed that performance enhancing drugs have the power to overcome differences in natural talents and the willingness to sacrifice and persevere in the quest to perfect those talents. These drugs are dangerous and although certain drugs have the potential to increase athletic performance, they carry the risk of side effects, which may include death and life-long morbidity. Sports that hold historical records and comparisons with them would become irrelevant by drug-aided athletes who would completely obliterate the old standards (Orchard 2006). A cycle would begin where athletes would be encouraged to take more and more drugs in other to keep up with the rapidly growing standard that comes with performance enhancement. It would create pressure for more athletes to ‘cheat’, undermining the basis for the competitions at stake and exacerbating the gap between those who can afford enhancements and those who cannot (Juengst 2015). Ethically, the sense of fair competition would be lost if performance enhancement was decriminalised as there would be no ceiling as to how far one could go to enhance themselves chemically for their chosen sport. Sport without antidoping laws would also disadvantage further those athletes who wanted to compete at an elite level without risking their health. Performance enhancement has the potential to create a public health catastrophe, whilst we would

In addition, doping in sports can be detrimental to the athletes health. Specifically, as stated in the article “ Is It Time To Allow Drugs in Sports?,” “We would be encouraging athletes to take these drugs and put their own personal health in danger” (Nolan). To explain, if we would allow athletes to take performance enhancing substances we would be putting their own health in jeopardy. Therefore, athletes taking performance enhancing substances is a major danger in which it may risk the athlete's lifestyle and well being . Additionally, according to Tannsjo article , “The Moral Case against Doping Bans”, “We often meet the argument that since doping jeopardizes the health of the athlete, it must be prohibited ”(Tannsjo). In order words, the

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.

The athletes who use drugs are cheating. They disobey the law and escape the punishment due to the advanced technology which makes it harder to detect the drugs. So, more and more athletes choose to improve their performance by this way. Furthermore, athletes show no respect to themselves and spectators if they take in drugs before the competition. Maybe they do not believe that they have the ability to achieve good results after hard training or can not bear the pressure of failure due to less training. What the spectators want to see is the real ability of the athletes though they also want to watch excellent competitions. In addition, the athletes who use drugs will never experience the joy and fun during the competitions and training. For the athletes who want to use drugs in games, what they are thinking about is only the medals, awards and money, they never really think of the significance of sports so they cannot enjoy the process of the competitions and training.