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Comment by mladenkovacevic | Hacker News Reader

Just make doping legal.

Everyone does it with varying levels of sophistication. Russians got caught this time.

EDIT: this post is more about me playing devil's advocate then my actual opinion. Olympics has become more about being the best evader of anti-doping procedure or using the "correct" enhancers then about actually making everyone not abuse ANY performance enhancers.

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Then you're basically forcing athletes that don't want to dope to do-so in order to remain competitive. I don't think that's fair.

Have 2 different leagues or events or whatever, the naturals and the enhanced.

Should we then also make Adderal legal to be used at work?

Isn't it as long as you get a prescription?

The GPs point is that it is a stimulant that increases performance at the cost of heart health. Were we to make it legal while at work, people who were working without it would be at a disadvantage, prompting a "normal" worker to increase productivity at the expense of their health.

Aaaabd you're back to broblem no 1

People have shown that they'll just watch the one where people have higher performance. Not too many people care about the health of the athletes. Just take a look at football.

Also, I would prefer if we applied ethical considerations across the board.

We already see countries/coaches/teams pressing athletes to use performance enhancing drugs.

This exists in bodybuilding. The naturals are on more moderate steroid doses.

AND forcing the athletes that biologically don't have to dope in order to win.

GP's point is that there are no athletes on this level who don't want to dope.

Replace "doping" with "training"... How is your argument changed?

Training doesn't have lifelong implications on mortality. If anything, remaining fit and active throughout your youth is probably a good thing. Sure there will be sports injuries, but those typically do not cause premature death.

Extreme exercise does have negative health effects. Here is one random discussion with some study links (found from a quick search):

http://www.drjohnm.org/2012/06/cw-its-settled-long-term-extr...

These all focus on long endeavors (over 3 hours) which is not very relevant for the majority of the Olympics.

Any athlete aiming for an olympic medal right now is already basically forced to do-so to remain competitive.

As opposed to forcing athletes that don't want to train to do-so in order to remain competitive?!

In the end, sports competition have exactly 0 purpose in this world except for entertainment and personal feeling superiority.

It seems like somehow you've forgotten that athletes are people. And that athletes who are taking performance enhancing drugs face the adverse effects of these drugs.

No, I haven't... Exactly because they're people, that means they have agency; they can choose whether to take the drugs or not, just like everybody else!

Agency is such a ridiculous argument that's been used to promote exploitation for ages. Black people just choose to participate in sharecropping, Chinese women just choose to bind their feet, women just choose to be prostitutes who get murdered at 4 times the rate of the next most dangerous jobs. It's only in retrospect that we view these as atrocities

And to pretend that this is some vacuum that athletes are making this decision in is ridiculous. Allowing steroids in competition means that you have to use steroids to compete. Were you capable of making these types of decisions as a child? Do we allow children to harm themselves or do we condemn it? Should we allow adults to do this when there is a very clear external factor that motivates them?

There's a big difference between someone doing a lousy, menial, humiliating or dangerous job to survive, and an athlete striving to be even better by taking drugs.

Well here they're also forcing innocent athletes to be barred from a competition because of corruption within the only athletics organization available to them.

An Olympic season is one of maybe 3 or 4 that some of these athletes have available to them to make their mark. Taking even one of those away from them can irreparably set back their career.

The problem with that is that you could take doping to dangerous extremes once legalised, and professional sport will become an unhealthy occupation as opposed to being inspirational for many around the world. Only those willing to sacrifice a normal healthy life for short term performance will win.

Yes, let's force people to take horribly damaging drugs in order to compete. Including women -- because taking cross-sex hormones isn't terrible for your health at all.

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