Much of the build-up [Ref: BBC News] and aftermath [Ref: BBC News] to Beijing 2008 focused on drugs and how to keep them out of the Olympics. For a long time the treatment of athletes found to be using drugs has been resolute. In 1988 the sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100m gold medal after testing positive for drugs [Ref: BBC News]. The scale and complexity of the problem was made plain in 2000, when two of East Germany’s most senior sports officials were charged with systematically doping over 100 young athletes throughout the 1970s and 80s [Ref: BBC News]. More recently the British sprinter Dwain Chambers was banned from athletics for two years after testing positive for the anabolic steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) [Ref: BBC News]. But condemnation of Chambers and others has not been unanimous. The Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) has voiced growing concern about the intrusiveness of drug tests [Ref: Guardian] and a number of commentators have suggested that reactions to drug testing are more to do with moral posturing [Ref: Guardian]  and political opportunism [Ref: spiked] than sportsmanship. Some have further argued that the use of performance enhancing drugs is entirely consistent with the desire to reach new heights of human athleticism [Ref: Reason]. But many remain vehemently anti-drugs, claiming that they undermine the spirit of sport. If drugs were allowed, the most successful athletes may not be the fastest or strongest, but those who have the best medical team. So would sport be undermined by sportsmen pumping themselves full of drugs? Or is doping in the tradition of what competitors have always done: pushing the boundaries of human endurance?

What is the ‘spirit of sport’?
Opponents of enhancement drugs argue that drug taking shows bad sportsmanship and deprives athletes of the ‘level playing field’ so central to the idea of fair competition. Recalling Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic games‘ famous maxim – ‘The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part’ – some claim that winning at any cost has superseded other considerations and is ultimately undermining the dignity and integrity of sport [Ref: City Journal]. But, say others, times have changed. Winning has acquired a stronger emphasis, but this is no bad thing. The shift from amateurism to professionalism in the Olympics, and in sport more widely, has improved the quality of sport and helped produce better athletes [Ref: PBS]. Another definition of the ‘spirit of sport’ – the Olympian motto ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (faster, higher, stronger) – implies sport is about exploring and stretching the limits of human potential [Ref: Reason]. Its proponents suggest that the attempt to overcome natural limits is what differentiates human athletic goals from those of animals. The use of enhancement drugs, they argue, is a fundamentally human activity. But others disagree. They argue that drug intervention can reach a point where it is impossible to distinguish between the uniqueness of human achievement and technological innovation. There are innate biological limits that athletes should respect and which give meaning to sporting excellence. Allowing enhancement drugs would de-humanize sport.

What are performance enhancing drugs?
The practice of using artificial substances or methods to enhance athletic performance has a long history [Ref: Observer]. As far back as the 776 BC Olympics, athletes were using cola plants and even eating sheep’s testicles in an effort to boost performance. Manipulation of the body, whether through training, diet or the use of equipment, was, and continues to be, an accepted part of athletic activity. What, ask critics, is so different about chemical enhancers, or even genetic enhancement? But strict limits are placed on the types of enhancers that can be legitimately used by athletes and there are currently eight main categories of enhancement drugs banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency [Ref: CBC]. Advancements in biotechnologies in the last four decades now mean that athletes can use a cocktail of drugs to overcome physical barriers, including anabolic steroids, Beta 2, blood doping and oxygen carriers. But whilst these drugs remain illegal in competitive sport, developments in performance enhancing technologies are growing by the day. Not only have researchers in London created a muscle building DNA [Ref: Guardian], but more recently Henning Wackerhage, a scientist and former triathlon competitor, laid out the possibility of modifying the human genome to create a superhuman runner [Ref: Times Online].

Is doping dangerous?
Anabolic steroids can cause infertility, liver abnormalities and tumours and various psychiatric disorders. Androstenedione will increase your chances of having a heart attack or stroke. Critics of enhancement drugs argue that they pose a significant health risks for athletes. But isn’t trying to be the best already hard on your health [Ref: Times Online? Exercise is known to be healthy, but the extreme exercise many athletes put themselves through can also be damaging. But critics say that the dangers posed by enhancement drugs are very different. Evidence given by the young female athletes involved in the German doping scandal revealed that forced steroids and testosterone doping had done profound physical damage, including liver dysfunction and infertility. Those that questioned the procedure were told that ‘you eat the pills, or you die!’ [Ref: Gladwell]. The scandal thus also raises important questions about coercion in sport. Attractive as narratives of the ‘human will’ and ‘assertion’ are, can the decision to use performance enhancing drugs ever be a wholly autonomous one?