Moral Implications of Enhanced DrugsMany people enjoy watching professional sports. The NBA, NFL and Olympics have all impressed thousands of people. One of the most attractive factors of professional sports is that you get to see someone perform a skill that you would never be able to. We all marveled at Usain Bolt's speed when he broke world records in the men's 100 meters. We also recognize that Michal Phelps is extremely gifted as he won 8 gold medals in the 2008 Summer Olympics. But what if someone told you that his incredible abilities are achieved through drugs improving performance? Maybe you'll be less surprised because it sounds like cheating, and you probably think the use of these drugs should be banned in professional sports. However, my thoughts are different; I think some of our moral intuitions about not using performance-enhancing substances in professional sport are not as concrete as we thought. In short, the use of performance-enhancing drugs should not be banned because it does not go against the notion of fairness, does not significantly harm athletes, nor does it violate the spirit of sport. . Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayThe most common and widely accepted view in favor of banning the use of performance-enhancing drugs , according to Randall Lea's article "Ethical Considerations of Biotechnologies Used for Performance Enhancement" (2009), is that the use of these drugs gives users an unfair competitive advantage over other athletes who do not use these drugs. drugs. Furthermore, the use of doping products during competitions is against the rules and is therefore unfair. Since professional sport requires a fair environment for everyone to compete, the use of performance-enhancing drugs should be prohibited. This fairness argument is certainly very convincing. However, it has a flaw. It was suggested in the article "Fairness and performance enhancement in sport" by Craig Carr (2008) to give every athlete the opportunity to take enhancement drugs in the same way, and then no one will have the advantage . This point reveals an important problem with the concept of fairness. Indeed, if everyone can take the medicine as they wish, it is certainly fair for all participants in the competition. Our notion of “fairness” simply requires exactly the same external conditions for every athlete, and that is the only thing fairness should require in the context of sport. Carr further argues that it doesn't make much sense to ban the use of performance-enhancing substances on the grounds that they break the rules. He says it sometimes promotes fairness by breaking the rules. For example, in basketball games, sometimes a player deliberately commits fouls to prevent his opponents from scoring. Everyone who loves watching basketball knows that this is a very common strategy for playing basketball, and no one thinks it's unfair since both teams can do it and it's a reasonable thing to do when a team leads its opponents by a few points and time is running out. This is the same argument made by Randall Lea (2009), that rule breaking does not always result in injustice. It is therefore not very convincing to accuse the use of doping products simply on the basis of the idea ofbreak the rules. Lea even suggests that the appropriate use of enhancing medications can create a more level playing field for naturally disadvantaged athletes. Lea maintains that racial and genetic differences between athletes still exist. As a result, no matter what rules are established, fairness can never be maintained between athletes. The use of stimulant medications, however, may actually help to alleviate differences between athletes and therefore promotes fairness. However, after seeing that the fairness argument does not work as desired, some people might still object to the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports. According to Dag Vidar Hanstad and Ivan Waddington's article "Perspectives, sport, health and drugs: a critical re-examination of some key issues and problems" (2009), these people are concerned about the negative effects of drug enhancement on athletes. They fear that athletes will suffer significant harm from taking stimulant medications and are unlikely to be able to lead healthy lives after retirement. Given these dire consequences for athletes, some argue that it is necessary to ban the use of stimulant medications. It never hurts to think about a person's health. However, this view is not correct for two reasons: First, the harms of some widely used stimulant drugs are not as great as most people think. For example, anabolic steroids are a very common type of stimulant drug that has been associated with many negative reports about its effects. But as Michael Evans-Brown, Rob Dawson, and Jim McVeigh (2008) point out in “The Disastrous Consequences of Doping,” most of these reports are just case reports that don't give people a general idea of ​​the real effects. drugs. In fact, according to Evans-Brown, Dawson and McVeigh, research has shown that about half of people who take anabolic steroids only report acne as a consequence, and these people consider acne an "acceptable risk." . Of course, this is not to say that performance-enhancing drugs cause no harm, but consider the second reason: at the professional sports level, it is much more likely that athletes will sustain significant injuries during intense competition with others. According to Dag Vidar Hanstad and Ivan Waddington (2009), the player is expected to be used to pain and injuries and to play with them. Given this fact, people will discover that the majority of injuries athletes suffer in professional sports are due to the competition itself and not from taking some type of drug. As Hanstad and Waddington point out, there are many cases of injuries during professional level sporting events each year, while the number of significant injuries due to steroid use remains unknown. Since it is considered normal for players to play in pain, the health-based argument immediately loses its force. If we truly want to ensure healthy lives for professional sports athletes, it is the fundamental way of playing professional sports that is the real thing we need to change, not the use of stimulant medications. But some still think it is inappropriate to make it legal for professional players to take performance-enhancing drugs. According to Randall Lea (2009), some argue that this goes against the spirit of sport, even if the use of performance-enhancing substances in professional sport could be made fair to all..