Doping poses a health risk to athletes

The argument

Proponents of a ban on doping ground their case in a duty of care. Professional sport, on this view, is not a private matter between an athlete and their own body: it takes place within an organised system of competitions, rules, and institutions, and the governing bodies that run that system bear a responsibility to mitigate the risks facing competitors wherever it is possible to do so. Just as those bodies regulate equipment, conditions, and conduct to protect athletes from unnecessary harm, they are obliged to address dangers that arise from the pursuit of competitive advantage itself. Performance-enhancing drugs, advocates argue, are precisely such a danger. Doping poses health and injury risks to the athletes who engage in it, and those risks are not incidental to the practice but inherent in it. The argument's inferential chain is straightforward: if governing bodies must mitigate risks to competitors where possible, and if doping is a source of health and injury risk, then governing bodies must act against doping where they can. A ban is the available instrument. By prohibiting performance-enhancing drugs outright, sport's institutions prevent athletes from taking them, and in preventing their use they remove or reduce the harms those substances would otherwise inflict. Supporters therefore present prohibition not as paternalistic interference but as the fulfilment of an existing institutional obligation. A governing body that permitted doping would be tolerating a known and avoidable hazard to the people under its charge, which is exactly what its responsibility to competitors forbids. Because doping poses a health risk to athletes, and because banning it is a feasible way of mitigating that risk, proponents conclude that doping should not be allowed in sport. The case thus supports the position directly: the duty to protect athletes' health entails keeping performance-enhancing drugs out of competition.

Context

Many of the drugs used to enhance an athlete’s performance carry dangerous side effects. These put the athlete’s health at risk.

Premises

Counter-arguments

If athletes are willing to take these risks, and many are, then why should the world of competitive sport stop them? Anyone that doesn’t want to risk their health does not have to take performance enhancing drugs. But those that are willing to put their health at risk in exchange for improved performance should be free to decide what to put into their bodies. Additionally, the adverse health impacts of doping pale in comparison to the risks athletes are forced to take every day, risks that are permitted in the rule book. American football players suffer concussions that can cause dementia later in life, rugby players wear out their knees and shoulders to the point that they cannot hold their children after retirement, and cliff divers risk their lives every time they compete. Put into perspective, the adverse health effects of doping are relatively manageable compared to the risks that come from competing at the highest level. If sport was serious about athletes’ safety, it would look at existing rules that put players at risk, not worry about doping.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] Doping is a choice. Athletes not willing to put their health at risk can choose not to take performance-enhancing drugs.

Framing

The rules of sport should be designed in such a way as to protect participants health where possible.