Should performance enhancing drugs be allowed in sports?
Performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) are currently prohibited in leading competitive sports around the world. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), brings about the notion that the spirit of the sport is a celebration of the human spirit, body and mind and that doping is fundamentally contrary to what is intrinsically valuable about sport (World Anti-Doping Agency, 2003).
The article, 'Why we should allow performance enhancing drugs in sport', written by J Savulescu, B Foddy and M Clayton is in direct contrast with this notion. Believing that by allowing the legalisation of drugs, will "make sport safer." (Savulescu, Foddy, & Clayton, 2004)
Not only do PEDs harm the aspect of sport, but it compromises fairness. Anything that undermines the principal philosophy of the game or compromises fairness has no place in sport. Thus performance enhancing drugs should not be permitted in competitive sport.
To have fairness in sport means that all who compete have equal opportunity to do so, not that all involved are permitted to tweak and change every cell in their body to maximum perfection.
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Dick Pound, member of the International Olympic Co...Games are fair in the way that all who play start in equal positions. Games start fair in this manor but do not necessarily end this way. There has to be a winner and thus, a loser for without this the thrill of the sport it lost. We need to support our athletes that are choosing to do the right thing by using persistence, training and determination to achieve success. PEDs will make sport unfair by undermining every athletes hard work and dedication by providing unnatural advantages to those countries who can afford the funding. Fairness is sport is that all participants are allowed to try their best using the natural talent that they were born with,