We should accept performance-enhancing drugs in competitive sports

The title of this post isn't my opinion. Instead, it's the proposal for yet another years-old Intelligence Squared debate I listened to last week. And it's yet another debate that left me more confused after than before.

Like with the debate I wrote about last week (It's wrong to pay for sex), I began listening to the debate on doping by holding an opposed position. And like with the paid-for-sex debate, I ended up thinking more about what the proposal says than anything the speakers said.

Does the proposal ask for the unconditional allowance of PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs) in all sports? Or is the proposal conditional—does it ask for the limited allowance of PEDs in some sports? For example, maybe we should allow steroids in American football but not in baseball. Or maybe we should allow steroids in both sports but put limits on the quantity of steroids the athletes use.

As it transpired, both teams argued their sides as though the proposal is conditional. The for side argued that the regulated use of PEDs could be safe and would make athletes faster, stronger and better. The against side argued that all uses of PEDs are wrong and thus PEDs should never be allowed. Predictably, the against side lost—it's a lot harder to defend never than sometimes.

For example, the for team squeezed the against team on the use of human growth hormone to speed up injury healing. As a PED, HGH helps athletes by allowing them to recover from workouts faster, thus allowing them to train harder and build muscle faster. But another use of HGH is helping an injury heal faster. Is it wrong to heal faster? If there are bad side effects caused by such use of HGH, then possibly yes. But if there aren't any bad side effects, then it's hard to see the problem. And in fact such bad side effects are well hidden—if they exist.

Another way of looking at this is to ask if it's wrong for athletes to use antibiotics or any other kind of medicine to recover from an illness. Some religious sects aside, we all agree it's OK to use medicine to recover from an illness. What then makes an injury different from an illness? What makes the use of HGH as a treatment for injuries different from the use of medicine? The difference is unclear. Yet HGH is considered a PED, and medicines aren't. Maybe we should put penicillin on the PED list.

No, it's absurd to debate this. The proposal must be asking something different, something more contentious. It must be asking about the more straight-up uses of PEDs, the kinds of uses that help a guy hit 73 home runs in a season or dominate the Tour de France for seven consecutive years. We know it when we see it—but should it be allowed? Could we regulate doping and make it safe enough for athletes while allowing them to achieve speed and strength never before realized by humans?

The problem is: doping already is allowed, and it's already regulated—in every sport. Yes, it's against the rules, but the rules are unenforceable. The outcome—made necessary by non-enforceability and the high stakes for winning—is that many top-tier athletes will dope as much as they can get away with. Like with speeding in traffic, we can't fully stop it; we can only limit it.

If that's the status quo now, then the implication is that the debate's proposal—We should accept performance-enhancing drugs in competitive sports—can't be argued for by taking the position of regulate the PEDs. The limited use of PEDs is the minimum use of PEDs, so the for side must argue for a stronger interpretation. Absent a specific limit described by the proposal, the sensible interpretation is of the unconditional use of PEDs—should athletes be allowed to do whatever they want to their bodies?

But I suspect a majority of people, once realizing the effects of combining the allowance of unhindered drug use with the win-at-all-costs attitudes present in many athletes, would oppose the proposal as interpreted unconditionally. There just aren't enough anarchists out there who trust in free markets so completely to make the proposal an even enough fight.

So again, like with the paid-for-sex debate, the proposal becomes a jumble of meaningless words. In this case, if the proposal is interpreted unconditionally then the debate is uncontentious. But if the proposal is interpreted conditionally then the against side is squeezed into a defenseless position.

I propose another IQ Squared debate, one to finally settle the matter. Here it is: Intelligence Squared proposals should be more specific.

But is my proposal specific enough?