Comment
Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
IntroductionIt can be seen throughout the history of sports that there have always been ways of enhancing an athlete’s performance. Some ways may be natural, but the one that brings the most controversy is the use of performance-enhancing drugs. These performance enhancement drugs are used by primarily athletes and bodybuilders to increase their muscle size and strength as well as their appearance and performance in events (1). The main type of performance enhancement drug is anabolic-androgenic steroids (2). The history of individuals using performance enhancement drugs can be traced back to nearly a century ago in 1939 when Germany was designing anabolic-androgenic steroids to help treat medical conditions such as depression and cryptorchidism. It has even been speculated that during World War 2 that the Nazis used these anabolic-androgenic steroids and gave them to their soldiers to enhance their performance and aggressiveness in battle (3). Use of anabolic-androgenic steroids then began to be used and abused by Olympic athletes until they were eventually banned in 1976. Even though they were banned, some athletes still continue to use them to this day and risk getting caught using the illegal substances. It is also not uncommon for these athletes to use multiple performance-enhancing drugs at the same time such as amphetamines and diuretics. An athlete may use a diuretic drug for the purpose of covering up the use of another performance-enhancing drug. The way that the diuretic does this is by diluting the urine of the athlete and some can even change the pH of the urine and only allow certain aspects of drugs to leave the body (4). Diuretics were eventually banned by the International Olympic Committee and the World Antidoping Agency and they continue to annually update the list of banned substances (4). With this list being annually updated and performance-enhancing drugs being harder to detect through a test, the ethical question must be asked about whether or not athletes should be allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs or not.Just like any other argument, there are two sides and both sides will be addressed in this paper. The majority of this argument lies in the social and ethical issues of allowing athletes to use these drugs. One of the ethical issues is whether or not the spirit of sport would be violated by allowing athletes to use these performance-enhancing drugs. The spirit of sport can be defined as the values of
Add Comment