In sports, as in life, there is no level playing field, never has been.

The idea of purity in athletics is deeply hypocritical. Some competitors have greater natural talents and more advantageous body types and even organs than others. Some possess a special genetic makeup which allows them to naturally beat drug tests, while most others have none. In various leagues, there are drugs genuinely helpful for recovery from injury which are banned under any circumstances, while others, far murkier in legitimacy, are allowed with permission. Even in the Olympics, known for its strictness, fewer than half the athletes are tested at any Games. And when you look at other jobs, from concert musician to action-movie star, everything from beta blockers to HGH is used regularly. While these performances aren’t competitions on the granular level, vying for such opportunities certainly is a contest akin to sport. 

In his Boston Globe essay, “Let Athletes Dope,” philosopher Torbjörn Tännsjö makes a moral argument for allowing competitors to juice, etc., arguing that our obsession with fetishizing natural strength borders on Social Darwinism. He makes a compelling case, but here’s the thing: Sports aren’t only about athletic displays or morality. They’re also, even on the amateur level, a business that has practical concerns and must remain attractive to spectators, often huge numbers of them.

Boxing declined precipitously when consciousness became raised about brain damage, and the same may happen to other sports which carry similar risks. Likewise, drug usage and its attendant health problems (and deaths) could be the end of such competitions. And athletes, being hyper-competitive, would probably push unchecked usage beyond all bounds of sense, going so far as to almost create an Uncanny Valley Effect. We like great athletes because they’re different than us, but also like them because they’re similar to us. (Tännsjö acknowledges there’s a chance that allowing PEDs could end the popularity of elite sports.)

The weakest part of the philosopher’s argument is his belief that we can enforce certain limits within this new permissiveness he urges. Even if there were boundaries on such drug use–you can use this much but no more–some athletes would then cheat on those parameters. There are those who will always look for a new edge and no amount of transparency will halt that.

Testing, though far from perfect, probably limits usage to a degree and somewhat inhibits health problems. But no one should really get too moralistic about it because there’s no great solution. My assumption is gene editing will further complicate the debate sooner than we think.

An excerpt:

The notion that natural strength deserves moral admiration is utterly strange. We do not accept this line of reasoning outside of elite sport.

Consider how students are accepted at a musical conservatory. They play before a jury. It is crucial to perform not only well but better than other applicants. Suppose two applicants, Brian and John, play before the jury. Brian is more talented than John. Both are nervous. John, however, has taken beta blockers, Brian has not. The drugs help, and John performs better. He is accepted. This is clearly the wrong decision by the jury. This seems similar to the sport contest. It is very different, however.

The reason why Brian should be accepted and not John has to do with efficiency. It is a waste of pedagogical resources to spend them on John, who is less talented. However, the fact that John enhanced his skill with artificial means is not a problem as such. The beta blockers could have been offered to both or to none. It doesn’t matter.

Once the person has graduated from the conservatory, it matters even less what means he resorts to in order to play well, artificial or natural. In music, and in the sciences and arts in general, we do show admiration, of course. What we admire, however, are the outputs of the artists and scientists, the artifacts — not the artists and scientists in themselves.

There are, of course, Tchaikovsky competitions and Nobel prizes in arts and sciences. But we do not take this quite seriously. And, in particular, it is not natural skill we favor and praise. We don’t give a damn if Einstein used artificial means of cognitive enhancement to make his contributions to science. Our interest is in the contributions themselves, not in the man, and, in particular, not in his natural talents.•