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Performance-enhancing drugs were endemic in Eastern-bloc Olympic competition for decades. From the Outside Magazine piece linked elsewhere in the comment thread

Performance-enhancing drugs were endemic in Eastern-bloc Olympic competition for decades. From the Outside Magazine piece linked elsewhere in the comment thread[1]: East Germany's state-supported system of doping, which often began before puberty, left a legacy of Olympic medals—along with deformed offspring, heart attacks, facial disfigurement, and lifelong sexual dysfunction. If you permit the drugs, they'll be used not just in the elite competitors, but in the entire funnel of hopeful competitors starting from high school. These are serious drugs with serious consequences. I for one don't think entertainment is worth that. [1] http://www.outsideonline.com/1924306/drug-test http://www.outsideonline.com/1924306/drug-test

smcl 11y ago
Is that more as a side effect of the fact that this sort of doping is very hush-hush, and if it was more open and permitted safer more effective enhancements would be developed?
- remarkEon 11y ago
  Maybe, but how would we set up a system of legal doping that doesn't provide any incentives to continue doping on the side, when the consequences for testing positive for a substance don't matter anymore? I could see a system where a certain amount of doping is legal, but you'd still have an incentive to get whatever edge you can on the side.
  - jerf 11y ago
    We basically already live under the scheme where a certain amount of doping is legal. It's just that what is legal, we don't call doping. But a pro athlete is certainly going to be downing protein powders, creatine powder, etc. that aren't natural either. There's no bright line. So I think you're already correct.
cafard 11y ago
The late Hal Connolly, an American hammer thrower, told a sports reporter that from about 1960 on everybody in the field events was using steroids. The East Germans were extreme in their devotion to this, but they were far from alone. [Edit: remembered from an article that ran in the NY Times shortly after Connolly's death.]

smcl 11y ago

Is that more as a side effect of the fact that this sort of doping is very hush-hush, and if it was more open and permitted safer more effective enhancements would be developed?

remarkEon 11y ago
Maybe, but how would we set up a system of legal doping that doesn't provide any incentives to continue doping on the side, when the consequences for testing positive for a substance don't matter anymore? I could see a system where a certain amount of doping is legal, but you'd still have an incentive to get whatever edge you can on the side.
- jerf 11y ago
  We basically already live under the scheme where a certain amount of doping is legal. It's just that what is legal, we don't call doping. But a pro athlete is certainly going to be downing protein powders, creatine powder, etc. that aren't natural either. There's no bright line. So I think you're already correct.

cafard 11y ago

The late Hal Connolly, an American hammer thrower, told a sports reporter that from about 1960 on everybody in the field events was using steroids. The East Germans were extreme in their devotion to this, but they were far from alone. [Edit: remembered from an article that ran in the NY Times shortly after Connolly's death.]