Will the Real Lance Armstrong Please Stand Up?
If you are sick or dysfunctional, drugs can make you better. Drugs will also make you "better" - better than you were? Better than you deserve to be? Functional with benefits?
Is Lance Armstrong on steroids still Lance Armstrong, only a more authentic version: his truer self? In addition to taking drugs to prepare for the Tour de France, Lance also worked hard. He didn't fly through the Alps, he cycled.
Imagine a researcher takes a certain medication. Side effects include making the researcher more outgoing and more energetic. He has more to say and is more charming. This makes him more confident. He is also working hard. Let's say his confidence helps him apply for more grants, his lab gets more funds, his research expands, and he eventually wins a Nobel Prize.
When the Nobel committee finds out he was on performance-enhancing drugs, would they take the prize away?
Of course, the organizations that run the Tour de France have a list of banned drugs. To my knowledge, the Nobel committee does not.
Students studying for exams take drugs to stay awake. Do universities treat that as cheating?
ReplyDeleteI don't think so. - Ron
by MattholomewCup @ hubski
ReplyDeleteI think this is a fascinating question. I've seen people who suffer from ADHD or other such disorders who say that it is "unfair" when other people use drugs like Adderall to help them focus more to cram for a test, a mental equivalent of steroid abuse, I'd imagine. But popping adderall before a test doesn't make you do well on the test - it allows you to focus and prepare more for the test, and get the most out of your knowledge and ability. I honestly don't fully know, because the media tends to obfuscate this but, what do steroids do, precisely? Do they actually build muscle? Or do they enhance the growth of muscles when training? I imagine someone taking steroids and then sitting on the couch gets the same impact as someone taking adderall and watching TV.
So what these drugs do, then, are that they enhance some quality that you already have - if you're studying, you study harder; if you train, you train harder. I think we can also ask a similar question: If you're drunk, or if you're stoned, are you still you? Are your actions while under the influence just you with less inhibition, or judgement? Legally we think so - you're treated as accountable for harm that befalls you or others (see: drunk driving). I don't think that this is a "truer" self because I consider inhibition and judgement to be just as much a part of a person as the things those qualities hold back. But it is a self.
We change all the time - You now is not the same you as the five-year-old you. And I don't mean that in a metaphorical way, none, or almost none of the cells in your body are the same cells you had when that body was only 5. They're always changing, and replacing themselves. Meanwhile, your mind is always changing, updating, making new connections and losing old ones. But we've decided that all these different people - you at 5, you at 13, you at 21 and 35 and 80 - are all the same person, many minds and bodies threaded over a single string of life. So knowing this, why would we decide that someone is a "different" person if they are under the effects of any drug, be it a steroid, an anti-depressant, or a joint?
It's understandable why steroids are largely banned - they definitely do make it harder, maybe implausibe, to compete with someone who is using them for those who don't. That said, if there were a steroid-like enhancement drug, with no side effects and a definite improvement in everyone who took them... why ban them? Why not treat them like a fact of life? Perhaps they could be abused, but so can any drug, including plenty of over-the-counter medications. It still requires dedication and physical prowess to make good on any enhancement drug, it just helps to achieve new heights. And besides that, consider that some people maybe just have a genetic predisposition towards athleticism! Is it unfair that a 5'10" guy in the NBA is at a disadvantage against 6'6" players? Maybe, but no one will propose cutting off some of the tall guys' shins. If we allow for natural advantages, why not say that we'll make an allowance for unnatural ones as well?
If we had the exact same thing for research scientists, a drug that had no side effects and helped them hyperfocus on their work and freed up neural pathways for enhanced intelligence... why on earth would we not use it? With an army of men and women with mind-enhancing drugs, we could discover the cure for cancer, or learn how to achieve efficient interplanetary travel with humans. If we can build a better human, why wouldn't we?
by kleinbl00 @hubski
ReplyDeleteMy uncle used to race rally cars. He won an old car rally in '86 - the Great Race\) - back when it was cars 50 years old and older. Which meant pre-war. a 1914 Dodge Brothers Touring driven from DC to Los Angeles won him a $150k purse.
In 1989 he ran it again, again in the Dodge Bros touring. This time, every single stop he made, they made the mechanics take the car apart looking for cheats. Finally after five days on the road they insisted that the transmission come out and be dismantled. Lo and behold - synchromesh gears. Because transmissions from 1914 Dodges are rather rare, the vehicle's owner had put Pugeot gears inside the Dodge case. They were cheating. In order to avoid scandal, they were stripped of their age advantage, forced to compete as a 1939, and finished the race in 8th place.
The amazing thing to me was not that my uncle was cheating. It was that everyone was cheating, it just didn't matter until you were winning. We knew people on that race running modern engines. Vehicles running steel-belted radials (which really improves your timing over canvas bias-ply, lemme tell ya!). Problem is, when you're charging a $30k entry fee of everybody running, and you've got a bunch of gentlemen racers out having a good time, they do not like to see a professional rally driver at the helm of anything.
In every sport in every nation in every league above amateur, people cheat. The argument about Major League Baseball isn't who's doping, it's who isn't doping. The basic problem is that doping works, doping is impossible to detect, and there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. And, since we pretend that somehow athletes are always role models and always the better angels of our nature, they aren't doing what it is clearly obvious everybody is doing. It's a competition. You do anything for an edge. Sunrise, sunset, forever and ever amen.
Science ain't like that. Nobody says "I wanna become a geneticist because I want Nobel money." Nobody gets into journalism because they want a Peabody on their mantlepiece. The accolades are a side-effect of the job. They are a validation, not an end product.
The world is coming down on Lance Armstrong like a ten ton shithammer because competitions have rules and he broke them. Mostly because he then lied about it for ten years. If he'd happened to cure polio along the way nobody would give two shits if he did it with a steady drip of goat estrogen on an IV pole strapped to his rear fender or whatever. But since the beginning and end of the entire process was competition governed by strict rules, everybody's doing the panty-twist dance.
I feel badly for him because he did so much good with the foundation he created which I am sure has helped so many people.
ReplyDeletePeople forget (conveniently) that "there but through the Grace of God, go I." None of us is perfect although some people seem to think they are, joke, joke. from Wilma