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Essendon, Doping and Bad Arguments

By Julian Savulescu. @juliansavulescu

The Australian newspaper ‘The Sunday Age’ reports today that “The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority has built a ”non-presence” drug case against 34 Essendon footballers, adopting a strategy similar to the one used to ban Lance Armstrong without a positive test.”

1. What should we think about this latest drugs “scandal” at Essendon, the so called “war on doping” in the Australian Football League (AFL), and in sport in general?

Read More »Essendon, Doping and Bad Arguments

Girls should do competitive sports to ‘build confidence and resilience’. Really?

The chief executive of the Girls Day School Trust claimed this week that girls should take part in competitive sport as a way to build confidence and resilience.[1] The claim is particularly about taking part in sports where one wins or loses. As far as is reported, these claims are not based on studies showing the psychological effects of participation in competitive sport, but are nonetheless presented as a supplementary argument for girls to do more sports in schools. Obviously, the primary argument will always be that doing sport is good for your health.

Without large scale empirical research, the claim that taking part in competitive sports builds transferable confidence and resilience remains a hypothesis. I am going to suggest that it is not a particularly convincing one (especially when applied to all girls, and in particular to the girls whom Fraser hopes will take up sport) and that any rhetoric accompanying a drive to promote exercise should stick to the more fundamental argument that it improves health.Read More »Girls should do competitive sports to ‘build confidence and resilience’. Really?

Marathon mice, enhancement and the will to work out

In his article in the Pacific Standard last week, author Bruce Grierson discusses the emerging scientific evidence that the ‘will to work out’ might be genetically determined. Grierson describes a ‘marathon mouse’, the descendant of a long line of mice bred for their love of exercise, and a 94-year-old woman called Olga, who is an athletic anomaly. Both the mouse and Olga love to work out. The mouse goes straight to his wheel when he wakes up, running kilometers at a time and Olga – a track and field amateur – still competes in 11 different events. Grierson suggests that cracking the code for intrinsic motivation to exercise would lead to the possibility of synthesizing its biochemical signature: ‘Why not a pill that would make us want to work out?’, he asks. Such a possibility adds an interesting dimension to the debate about enhancement in sport, and to enhancement debates more generally.Read More »Marathon mice, enhancement and the will to work out

Is it morally permissible for parents to encourage their children to play high-impact sports?

Concussions are prevalent in high-impact and much-beloved sports such as American and Australian football, rugby, and hockey. Concussions are harmful – recent studies link repeated concussions to degraded cognitive performance along a number of measures (Randolph et al. 2013), as well as an increased risk of neurodegenerative conditions such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (McKee et al. 2013). Concussions are much in the news. Recent events such as the suicide of Dave Duerson and the suicide of Junior Seau have been linked to the long-term effects of repeated concussions, and the governing bodies of many high-impact sports have, of late, been scrambling to address the problems posed by growing awareness of the danger of concussions.

A number of ethical questions arise in connection with this growing awareness. (What should the governing bodies of sports leagues do to protect players? What do teams owe players in such sports? Is the decision to play such a sport, or to continue playing in spite of suffering a concussion, really autonomous? Should fans speak up about player protection, and if not, are they complicit in the harm done to players? And so on.) Here I want to consider one question that has received little attention. It involves the role of parents in fostering participation in high-impact sports.Read More »Is it morally permissible for parents to encourage their children to play high-impact sports?

The Morality of Sport-Hatred

It used to be the case that fans of Auburn University’s football team would gather after victories at Toomer’s corner in Auburn, Alabama, to throw rolls of toilet paper into the historic oak trees there. The trees have been removed. Not because Auburn University wanted it that way: Harvey Updyke, a fan of the University of Alabama’s football team – Auburn’s hated cross-state rival – poisoned the trees in 2010. Updyke was caught when he called in to a local sports radio show to brag about the deed. He was charged with criminal mischief, desecrating a venerated object and damaging agriculture. Although he initially pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, he later made a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to criminal damage of an agricultural facility. He served six months in jail, and was released in June of this year.

This is of course a bad situation. I’ve been to football games at Auburn, and though I sport-hate their football team, the celebration at Toomer’s corner was a great tradition and the trees, themselves, were beautiful. I don’t wish to pass more judgment on Updyke, but rather to reflection on an ethical question his action raises. Read More »The Morality of Sport-Hatred

Should athletes be allowed to use performance enhancing drugs?

Press Release: British Medical Journal Head to Head: Should athletes be allowed to use performance enhancing drugs? Stories about illegal doping in sport are a regular occurrence. On bmj.com today, experts debate whether athletes should be allowed to use performance enhancing drugs. Professor of ethics Julian Savulescu, from the University of Oxford, argues that rather than… Read More »Should athletes be allowed to use performance enhancing drugs?

Political Change and the Olympic Games

by Luke Davies

The upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi has been in the news a lot recently. The controversy, as you will already know, is a result the introduction of another law discriminating against the LGBT community in Russia—Article 6.21 of the Code of the Russian Federation, the so-called “gay propaganda” law. [1] This law will allow the government to fine anyone who spreads propaganda about “non-traditional sexual relations” to minors. (The meaning of “propaganda” and “nontraditional sexual relations” is left quite ambiguous.) Given the insistence of Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko that competing athletes and visiting spectators must obey the laws of the country, there has been some disagreement about what to do. There are different levels of concern being given priority in the media, some more pertinent from an ethical perspective than others.

Here’s a spoiler: The trivial concerns have to do with the politics of the Olympic Games themselves; the real concern is with the harm to people’s lives in Russia.Read More »Political Change and the Olympic Games

Doping…When Will We Learn?

The second fastest runner of all time, USA’s Tyson Gay, has reportedly tested positive for a banned substance, along with the Jamaican sprinters Asafa Powell, and Sherone Simpson making for shocked headlines across the world.

But this is just one high profile story amongst a recent rash of news stories across sports and across countries. In athletics, 24  Turkish athletes are confirmed to have tested positive this year; Australian Rules Football is still reeling from the ongoing Essendon scandal; and over in the United States, inquiries into an anti ageing laboratory said to supply human growth hormone to top baseball players are ongoing. Whilst the 100th Tour de France is so far untainted by positive tests, cycling doping cases have continued this year with two Giro D’Italia riders testing positive.

Still there is a sense that we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Chris Froome, now tested at the end of each stage as the yellow jersey, has been relentlessly hounded over whether his recent impressive performances are due to doping.

1. The Failure of Zero Tolerance

We don’t know which individuals are doping and which are not. One thing we do know is that the zero tolerance ban on doping has failed.

Read More »Doping…When Will We Learn?

Forced Physical Exercise as an Intervention for Mental Disorders?

Studies have shown that regular physical activity has benefits for mental health: exercise can help people to recover from depression and anxiety disorders. However, not all people like exercise, and a mental disorder like depression can additionally decrease motivation for physical activity. So the disorder itself might inhibit behaviour that helps to overcome it.

We would assume that pressurising people is no solution here: several studies have shown that restricting freedom of choice or control increases stress in both humans and animals. However, new research tentatively indicates that controllability might play a smaller role than expected when it comes to exercise, and that even forced exercise might protect against depression and anxiety symptoms:

Read More »Forced Physical Exercise as an Intervention for Mental Disorders?