Why we should allow performance enhancing drugs

[Munkay]

Anyone can buy those swims (if they can afford it, haven't checked how much they go for these days), and as Pete says anyone will be able to enhance themselves when the appropiate enhancements are available. Anyone can use those drugs today, and probably we'll have drugs good enough to avoid most if not all secondary effects rather soon, so that's that excuse gone. What then? :)
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It's definately a sticky situation. The line between whats 'cheating' and whats 'enhancing' is becoming very blurry. My gut reaction is simply this: Anything synthetically made that enhnaces the physiological make up of a competitor.

As Pete said this will all become moot in a short amount of time. If implants do not sky rocket soon enough, designer drugs that are undetectable will.

I was reading a medical article about synthetic liquid that can be used to replace worn out cartilage. Down the road the synthetic could be replaced with true organic directly from reproduced cells taken from the patient's own joints. Is this cheating? By todays standards probably not. But it brings up an interesting point, for simple regenative procedures will become more and more common. Many top atheletes risk pushing their bodies to the limits. Its accepted that if a severe injury happened, its all over for the athlete. But if you no longer need to worry about the damages of over training, the bar raises itself again.

I bring up the cartilage example simply for the fact that it doesn't seem like a big deal. Compared to mechanical legs that could allow people to run 1 minute miles it isn't. But people don't have a hard time throwing out the extremes when drawing a line.

The future of athletic competition will be interesting at the very least.

Cheers,

Munk