Hacker News Reader

Comment by lacrimacida | Hacker News Reader

From what you describe I don’t even understand how this is considered doping, unless the athlete is doing this to cover up for other substances in their blood during their training. Could anyone elaborate?

View on HN

Raising the amount of red blood cells gives you an advantage because the blood can carry more oxygen. This leads to a race where everyone tries to raise it as far as possible. This is quite dangerous, because the blood gets ever thicker (which leads to thrombosis, as with the cyclist Tom Simpson in 1967). Banning blood doping helps to protect the athletes as well.

Pretty much all bans against PEDs and doping are to protect the athletes. If you allow them then the winner is whoever pushes their body furthest without going over the point that kills them, and a lot of people end up going over.

Blood doping is listed as a prohibited procedure by various sports organizations (e.g. the world anti-doping code), and thus is doping by their fiat. According to wikipedia, the Olympics first banned the practice in 1985, so reading commentary from that time might be illuminating if you're unsure as to why it might be considered cheating.

This type of doping is strictly helpful. If it were allowed then everyone would have to do it. Is that what we want sports to turn into? Every athlete in a cot at the starting line, getting filled up with new blood?

> is strictly helpful.

someone mentioned that blood doping makes your blood thicker, which is dangerous (you can get clots, stroke or heart attack from it?).

Yes, I personally have an interest in human advancement, and would definitely be following that sort of competition.

I'm all in favor of safeguarding the athletes, but I feel it's getting ridiculous at this stage and we should just allow for a type of competition where everything's allowed.

The more you do blood doping, your risk of a blood clot or other major complications increase. If everyone in sports blood doped, a noticable number of athletes would die or have career ending complications because of it.

> we should just allow for a type of competition where everything's allowed.

Blood doping is not illegal. You and anyone who agrees with you are 100% free to host your own Cyberpunk Olympics with whatever eligibility rules you allow. You might not be allowed to use the word Olympics because of trademark.

But if this were allowed at the Olympics, the only winners would be those who put themselves at more risk. It would effectively be mandatory if you want to even get close to the top.

Look at professional bodybuilding to see how this ends. Being competitive means taking years (decades?) off of your life expectancy, and nobody wants to see their heroes die in their 50s.

Doping is banned mainly for PR reason. The audience don't want to watch a sport where every medalist gets something injected into their body and people who refuse doing that have no chance.

increased red blood cell count = increased capacity to carry oxygen = increased aerobic endurance

Reply on news.ycombinator.com