The use of performance enhancing drugs in sports (doping) is done to improve athletic performance. Doping in sports has become a highly controversial topic among professional sporting venues and in the media. With the increased pressure to perform, high priced contracts, increased competition, and advanced training methods today’s athletes will try to gain an edge by any means necessary. Performance enhancing drugs used by athletes today include Human Growth Hormone (HGH), anabolic steroids, peptide hormones, amphetamines, insulin and stimulants. The reason athletes use performance enhancing drugs is to increase the amount of testosterone produced in the body. The increased testosterone in the body increases muscle strength by enabling new …show more content…
Eugene Robinson from the Washington post claims “Most fans watch sports…to see people unlike themselves perform extraordinary physical feats. The superhuman quality of professional athletes is precisely what Americans admire about them” (p.A25).
Supporters of the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports argue if athletes want to take drugs to improve their performance, why should we determine what risky behavior they take part in unless it directly interferes with our lives? They are not harming anyone else but themselves. They are adults and are capable of making decisions about what they put in their own bodies. Keith Burgess-Jackson, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Arlington states “…people should be able to use whatever substances they want when they compete. Those who don't want to risk their lives or health should take up another line of work.”
Supporters of PED’s further argue justification by claiming that athletes use dietary supplements, exercises, medical treatment etc. to enhance their performance. They argue that taking protein powder, vitamin pills or spending exuberant amounts of time working out in a gym is also unnatural and enhances performance, but we don’t view that as cheating. “If something can be said to be 'natural', we tend to be okay with it. If it seems lab-made or
Because sports are very important to many people, and have been since the days of the Romans, there is much pride and honor in sports; however, there is something that has tainted the image of sports and athletes alike:
Performance-enhancing drugs (PED 's) have been an issue for many decades now for the medical and sports field. Olympic and professional athletes have been using them to gain an upper hand on the competition, but some may ask if it 's really worth it? Studies show that performance-enhancing drugs have been proven to negatively affect the health of athletes who take them. Simply put, performance-enhancing drugs could either improve athletic performance or can be extremely dangerous, in certain situations, deadly. There have been strict rules and drug testing in the professional sporting organizations, as well as in world competitions. For example, in the summer of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, in two of the
The Intelligence Square U.S. held a debate about whether or not the government’s rules on performance enhancing drugs should be ban in professional sports. For the debate they had Radley Balko, Investigative Journalist, Norman Fost, Professor of Pediatrics and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, and Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford argue for the motion. They argue the fact that the medicines we take on a daily basis from the pharmacy are also performance enhancers. This goes back all the way to the Romans who once used herbs to improve themselves for battle, making them believe that the only exception that separates this from steroids is that it is illegal. On the other hand, you have
The benefits of using some types of performance-enhancing drugs are obvious. Professional athletes have a very 'short shelf life' as competitors in most sports and must cash in on their talents as soon as possible. For Olympic athletes, the
Mr. Smith states “The primary reason why performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) are outlawed in professional sports is that they give users an unfair advantage over the rest of the field” and that “legalizing PEDs would make life much easier for professional sports organizations currently
Abstract: With the increase of competition has also come the need to become bigger and stronger than the opponent. The use of steroids among athletes has caused the focus of the game to change. No longer does an athlete want to win by doing their best, but they want to become bigger and have an advantage over the opponent. Ultimately, all athletes feel that they need to use performance-enhancing drugs to compete at the same level. Despite all of the warnings and information on performance-enhancing drugs, athletes continue to use them and overlook the potential health risks associated with steroids.
“…medical researchers believe that between 1 and 3 million youths and adults have taken anabolic steroids in one form or another specifically to enhance their looks or athletic performances,” stated Nuwer (Nuwer, 61). As astounding as these figures are, the number of performance drug users is steadily increasing. With this progressively increasing numbers, it is projected that millions more will use steroids in the immediate future (Newer, 61). Athletes have always sought an advantage in competition even if ignoring the law and their health if necessary. Using drugs of any sort to facilitate an athlete’s athletic ability should be illegal. The use of performance enhancing drugs is not only detrimental to the user but it also creates an
Do you want to want to become the peak athlete that you know your body is capable of? Well, this paper will not do that for you, but it will tell you how, and it will tell you why it should be legal to do so. Doping in sports is one of the most extensive debates within the realm of athletics. Whether it be injecting anabolic steroids, consuming them, or blood doping, athletes will do drugs. Doping has no effect on the viewership of the sport. Athletes can always find ways to cheat the system, and trying to prevent the use seems impossible. The use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) should be legalized, as long as it is allowed under medical supervision.
The topic for my stakeholder research paper is performance enhancing drugs. My research is the affects of performance enhancing drugs on athletes and how it affects society. The stakeholders for the research paper are the professional athlete, the college athlete, governing bodies and the fan. The effects of drug use on the professional athlete can cost them their career and also their lives. The college athlete wants to become the fastest or the biggest and nevertheless don’t view performance enhancing drugs as dangerous. Sports governing bodies in the United States have taken action towards controlling the use of performance enhancing drugs. However there is the fan that will still idolize the top athletes even though they use
Future athletes need to be educated and understand that performance enhancing drugs are wrong and violate the rules of sportsmanship (Survey Reveals). Many professional sports associations, including the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), and even the International Olympic Committee (IOC) take the use of performance enhancing drugs, or PED’s, by athletes and coaches very seriously. They have imposed harsher consequences and have created more frequent testing protocols. All are developing stronger methods to prevent use of in the years to come.
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
PEDs and steroids provide better stamina, stronger muscles, and more muscular endurance. "Society cares because steroid use is a form of cheating. Since steroids work so well, they create an unfair advantage for those who take them, and this breaks the social contract athletes have implicitly agreed to: We are going to have a fair contest. There are things we can and cannot do. Even if there were a safe performance-enhancing substance, if it weren't available to everybody, using it would still be cheating" (Dillingham). The end game will be actions that are increasingly violent, extreme, and meaningless, practiced by a class of chemical and or genetic mutant gladiators. The use of performance-enhancing drugs is not accidental; it is planned and deliberate with the sole objective of getting an unfair
PED’s in high school, college, and professional sports have been a problem since the 1960’s. There are many types of performance enhancing drugs like: stimulants, supplements, human growth hormones, and anabolic steroids. These PED’s are taken to improve strength, train for longer periods of time, and improve endurance. “Doping” is a word used to show that athletes are using illegal substances to improve their skill level. The World Anti-Doping Agency was created to bring awareness about the issue of doping into the sports arena.
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.
My topic of choice for the argumentative essay is doping and performance enhancing drugs for athletes. Doping means the use of illegal drugs to improve performance. This topic is important because it is a current issue and past issue in our society. Doping gives the users an edge and a higher percent of winning, while it makes the “non-dopers” fall behind. Doping has many pros and cons. People are against performance enhancing drugs, because it gives those using the drugs an unfair advantage. They also say that doping can lead to negative effects including strokes and heart attacks. Others are for the performance enhancing drugs, because sports would be more interesting. They say that the winners of sports are the one with the best resources,