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Essay / Why performance enhancement should not be allowed in sports
The topic and discussion of most athletes' use of performance enhancing substances, such as muscle builders (steroids), is becoming increasingly difficult as biotechnologies like gene therapy become a reality. The accessibility of these new methods of performance enhancement will force us to decide what we desire most in sport: demonstrating physical distinctions developed through hard work or winning at all costs. For centuries, spectators and athletes have loved the tradition of fairness in sport. While sporting competition is of course first and foremost about winning, it is also about the means by which a player or team wins. Athletes who use any kind of biotechnology give themselves an unfair advantage and disrupt the sense of fair play, and they should be banned from competition. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essayResearchers are experimenting with techniques that could harness an athlete's genetic code to build stronger muscles or increase tolerance. Searching for cures for diseases like Parkinson's disease and muscular dystrophy, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania created "Schwarzenegger mice," rodents that grew larger than normal muscles after receiving injections of a gene that stimulates growth protein. The researchers also found that a combination of genetic manipulation and exercise led to a 35% increase in the strength of the rats' leg muscles. Such therapies represent major advances for humans suffering from muscle diseases; for healthy athletes, it could mean new world records in sports involving speed and endurance, but at what cost to the integrity of athletic competition? The International Olympic Committee's World Anti-Doping Agency was so alarmed by the possible effects of new gene therapies that it pushed researchers to design a test to detect genetic changes. Some bioethicists argue that this next wave of performance enhancement is an acceptable and inevitable feature of competition. But the effects of steroids (PED) on men and women are really not worth it. Acne, gynecomastia, and female facial hair are just a few of the many effects they have on both men and women. As Dr Andy Miah, who supports the regulated use of gene therapies in sport, says: “The idea of the naturally perfect athlete is a romantic absurdity. An athlete achieves what he accomplishes through all kinds of means, technologies, sponsorship, support, etc. Miah, in fact, sees athletes' impending resort to genetic modification as “simply a continuation of the way sport works; it allows us to create more extraordinary performances.” Miah's endorsement of "extraordinary performance" as the goal of competition reflects our culture's tendency to demand and reward new heights of athletic achievement. The problem is that today's successes increasingly come from biological and high-tech interventions rather than hard work. Better equipment, such as aero bikes and fiberglass poles for pole vaulting, have allowed athletes to record feats unthinkable a generation ago. But the athletes themselves must make physical efforts to..