Performance Enhancing Drugs - is it really cheating?

Originally posted by: souro

To say that taking performance enhancing drugs is cheating (or not cheating), first we need to define what is cheating. The simplest meaning of cheating is to gain advantage by unfair means. Do PEDs give an advantage, obviously. But is it unfair? I have my doubts about that.

The ban on PEDs is not absolute. Some countries make their sale more difficult than others, but they are available everywhere and are easily sourced. So, how is it unfair if it is available to everyone, everyone is free to take it and then out of them whoever is the best, wins.

Moreover, only those substances which are currently known are put on the banned list by sporting authorities. However, we all know laboratories are always researching and coming up with latest drugs that are completely new and therefore not on the radar yet. They might get banned down the road, but till the time it is not, it will give an advantage to those athletes who have access to it, more specifically to athletes of that country where that substance has been developed. How is it fair that we enable cash rich countries and their athletes, who can afford expensive research to come up with a new PED, to take them and enhance their performance, but we don't allow athletes from poorer countries to have anything to do with older known PEDs. How is that a level playing field? That is more unfair in my opinion.

Coming to the aspect of performance enhancing, is PED the only thing that enhances performance? Not so. Although it might be the easiest and cheapest way to enhance performance. Training infrastructure, equipment, proper nutrition, all such things also impact performance enhancement. But these things are expensive. It costs money to have a good training infrastructure for everyone in a country, from the grassroots to elite athletes. It costs money to do research and find out which training equipment or diet will produce the best results. and providing elite level nutrition for everyone will cost humongous amounts of money. Even if the latest training equipment is available on the market, or the best dietitians are available for hire, most of the chances are you'll have to spend large sum of money to get them from a developed country. Even best quality whey proteins, BCAA, and other such supplements are most of the times imported. How many countries can afford that or can give priority to such expenditures, especially for all the budding athletes and not just their elite athletes. Whereas, almost everyone can afford the old PEDs and it can be manufactured by any local pharma company. So, instead of helping to level the playing field, organisations like WADA are helping only the financially rich countries to have an advantage, by allowing those performance enhancing aspects which are costly, but disallowing the easily available and cheap performance enhancing substances.

Coming to the point of natural. In our life as human beings, which aspect is completely natural nowadays. If I take the matter of nutrition, is whey protein, BCAA, vitamin tablets, iron/ calcium/ zinc etc. tablets, creatine, glucosamine, and so many other supplements, natural? Is it not unfair advantage then to reach optimum intake level of each mineral or substance necessary for peak performance, without having to consume whole foods. If an athlete had to get all these through whole foods, they'd have to consume such enormous amount of food that they'd have a difficult time reaching that optimum level for every substance while at the same time maintaining a calorie intake that the body can metabolise and not put on fat. Then why this exception for PEDs? Testosterone is just that, testosterone, as natural as they come, produced by the body all the time. So is human growth hormone. And anabolic steroids just mimic testosterone and it's function, only multiple times more potent. So how is it that testosterone and HGH is considered unnatural but other supplements are natural. They are more natural than Gatorade.

Lastly, the other reason that is cited for this ban, adverse effects. Yes, PEDs have adverse side effects, especially in high doses. But then so does sports itself. Every elite athlete nowadays trains intensely all day, every day for maybe 20-25 years of their life. And we all are aware how much stress that causes on their body - their muscles, joints, bones, even brains because of concussions, and the sports related injuries that athletes suffer. Yet we encourage athletes to do exactly that, train for so many years, putting enormous stress on their body, suffering injuries, yet somehow the adverse effects of PEDs seems to be the only thing we have a problem with.