The Impact of Performance Enhancing Drugs on Sports

3458 Words7 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Negative effects of steroid use

The Impact of Performance Enhancing Drugs on Sports

One of the major issues in the news recently has been the use of performance enhancing substances in sports. This topic has been the subject of many front-page headlines in many publications, from sports magazines to newspapers. A recent scandal involving a San Francisco Bay Area laboratory, BALCO Laboratories, has brought this issue to the forefront, and it's really gotten a lot of attention because this case has led to a 42 count federal indictment by the U.S. Attorney General.[1] Another question can be asked as well: Should these performance-enhancing substances be allowed in sports?

First of all, what exactly are performance-enhancing substances? They are just what they are called: substances that are used for enhancing performance. The use of these substances is of particular concern to agencies that govern sports, especially amateur sports. Some examples of performance enhancers that are used are anabolic steroids, stimulants, diuretics, and other alternatives. Steroids are chemicals that are typically produced by the human body as a way to regulate various bodily functions. Anabolic versions are used to increase muscle mass and endurance.[2]

Unfortunately, steroid and drug use in sports is nothing new. Until 2003, the most famous case of steroid use probably occurred at the 1988 Olympic Games. Some of you may remember the 100-meter race between U.S. athlete Carl Lewis and Canadian athlete Ben Johnson. After the race had been run, with Johnson emerging as the winner, a drug test was taken by Johnson and it came out positive for steroids, meaning that he would have to forfeit his gold medal.[3] Another famous, and more recent, example occurred in 1...

... middle of paper ...

...Chemist, 2003, ESPN 29 Feb 2004,

http://espn.go.com/gen/news/2003/1112/1659917.html

[11] Ashley 22.

[12] ?U.S.: Drug Ring Aided Top Jocks,? San Francisco Chronicle 13 Feb 2004:A1

[13] ?Drugs Involved In BALCO Case,? San Francisco Chronicle 13 Feb 2004:A23. Both drugs named here are covered by this endnote.

[14] ?Drugs Involved In BALCO Case,? San Francisco Chronicle 13 Feb 2004:A23.

[15] United States Anti-Doping Agency. Guide to Prohibited Substances and Prohibited Methods of Doping. 2004.

http://www.usantidoping.org/files/USADA_Guide.pdf

[16] Rachels, John. ?The Elements of Moral Philosophy.? p. 92

[17] Rachels 108.

[18] Kowalski 13.

[19] Rachels 202.

[20] Rachels 121. Also see Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant, 1875.

[21] Rachels 173-4.

[22] Rachels 174.

[23] Schnirring 16.

[24] Schnirring 16.

Show More
Related

  • Anabolic Steroid Use in Professional Sports

    1264 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wright, H., (2009). The ten most notorious steroid users in sports history. Retrieved April 29,

    Read More

  • Professional Athletes: The End of "Roid Rage"

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    Those who believe the use of anabolic steroids should be allowed in professional sports have numerous arguments for those in opposition. Professional sports leagues have tried to stop the use of steroids by drug testing players and punishing those who do not pass. A number of major athletes, such as Lance Armstrong, have been stripped of their athletic accolades due to discoveries of drug use. Despite witnessing the fall of great competitors due to “doping,” people continue to use. Because of unsuccessful attempts at banning the drug, many people believe “it may be time to head in the other direction: legalize performance enhancers” (Smith 1). No matter how many rules and regulations are made against the use of steroids, athletes will continue to abuse the drug in order to get ...

    Read More

  • The Unimportance of Riches in a Relationship, Portrayed in Zora Neale Hurston's, Their Eyes Were Watching God

    967 Words  | 2 Pages

    Janie in her first marriage is her far from mesmerized with her husband's 60 acre land. The incompatibility between her and Logan ultimately cause the marriage to fail. Logan being described as old and ugly is in contrast to the beautiful young Janie. With the age difference comes the difference in perspectives. Logan's first wife obviously held her own weight: "Mah fust wife never bothered me 'bout choppin' no wood nohow. She'd grab dat ax and sling chaps lak uh man" (Hurston 26). He implies that Janie should be more like his first wife and that she needs to be more helpful around the house. Janie thinks otherwise: "You don't need mah help out dere, Logan. Youse in yo' place and Ah'm in mine" (Hurston 31). Janie thinks this way because that is the way she was taught. At this point, she starts realizing that he is seeing her more as an object rather than a person. Granny really took care of her and so Logan implying that she needs to work harder is something that bothers her. Janie fails to experience the love that she expects comes with marriage especially when Logan stops "talking in rhymes" (Hurston, 26 ) to her not far into the relationship. As a young woman, feeling...

    Read More

  • Media and Body Image

    1147 Words  | 3 Pages

    We hear sayings everyday such as “Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep”, yet we live in a decade that contradicts this very notion. If looks don’t matter, then why are so many women harming themselves because they are not satisfied with how they look? If looks don’t matter, then why is the media using airbrushing to hide any flaws that one has? This is because with the media establishing unattainable standards for body perfection, American Women have taken drastic measures to live up to these impractical societal expectations. “The ‘body image’ construct tends to comprise a mixture of self-perceptions, ideas and feelings about one’s physical attributes. It is linked to self-esteem and to the individual’s emotional stability” (Wykes 2). As portrayed throughout all aspects of our media, whether it is through the television, Internet, or social media, we are exploited to a look that we wish we could have; a toned body, long legs, and nicely delineated six-pack abs. Our society promotes a body image that is “beautiful” and a far cry from the average woman’s size 12, not 2. The effects are overwhelming and we need to make more suitable changes as a way to help women not feel the need to live up to these unrealistic standards that have been self-imposed throughout our society.

    Read More

  • Healthcare Reform in the United States

    1608 Words  | 4 Pages

    For decades, one of the many externalities that the government is trying to solve is the rising costs of healthcare. "Rising healthcare costs have hurt American competitiveness, forced too many families into bankruptcy to get their families the care they need, and driven up our nation's long-term deficit" ("Deficit-Reducing Healthcare Reform," 2014). The United States national government plays a major role in organizing, overseeing, financing, and more so than ever delivering health care (Jaffe, 2009). Though the government does not provide healthcare directly, it serves as a financing agent for publicly funded healthcare programs through the taxation of citizens. The total share of the national publicly funded health spending by various governments amounts to 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, GDP (Jaffe, 2009). By 2019, government spending on Medicare and Medicaid is expected to rise to 6 percent and 12 percent by 2050 (Jaffe, 2009). The percentages, documented from the Health Policy Brief (2009) by Jaffe, are from Medicare and Medicaid alone. The rapid rates are not due to increase of enrollment but growth in per capita costs for providing healthcare, especially via Medicare.

    Read More

  • Tour de France Drug Abuse

    4753 Words  | 10 Pages

    MacAuley, Domhnall. “Drugs in Sport.” BMJ: British Medical Journal, 313.7051, 7/27/96, 211. Online. EBSCOhost. 16 Nov. 1999. http://www.EBSCOhost.com.

    Read More

  • Society has Unrealistic Image of Woman in Article, Fat Is a Feminist Issue”, by Susie OrBach

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    Society is obsessed with fitness and weight loss. Ever since I was in sixth grade I have had issues with my weight and self-image. The article “Fat Is a Feminist Issue”, by Susie OrBach focuses on how our society puts this unrealistic image of what women should look like into everyone’s heads. The media and magazines urge women to conform, at any cost, into a constantly changing expectation of what is beautiful. Women are taught to look at themselves from an outside view, to be a sex image for men and fuel the diet and fashion industries. Society thinks if women do not fit within the unrealistic image something is wrong with them. The highly glorified concept of beauty marketed by the media contributes to the concern over body image that causes many women, including myself, to eating disorders and poor self-image.

    Read More

  • Steroids Should Be Banned

    904 Words  | 2 Pages

    For those who've never heard of the term PED's, Performance enhancing drugs are any supplements that are considered to allow one perform better in their respective sports ,such as anabolic steroids and HGH( Human Growth hormones). The effects of these supplements can range from expediting muscle to increasing one's stamina. PEDs began to become the center of controversy when the I.O.C set up a medical commission to oversee the fight against doping, which ultimately lead to the ban of PED's in professional sports. Stemming off from the I.O.C...

    Read More

  • Unrealistic Body Images

    1147 Words  | 3 Pages

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In our society today, people would rather see what celebrities are up to than what is going on with our health plan. Watching the news makes us aware of the latest trend, new gadget, who’s in rehab, or who has an eating disorder. In the eyes of society, women like Eva Longoria, Kim Kardashian, and Megan Fox are the epitome of perfection. What girl wouldn’t want to look like them? Unfortunately, this includes most of the girls in the US. Through TV shows, commercials, magazines or any form of advertising, the media enforces a certain body type which women emulate. The media has created a puissant social system where everyone must obtain a thin waist and large breasts. As a society, we are so image obsessed with the approval of being thin and disapproval of being overweight, that it is affecting the health of most women. Women much rather try to fit the social acceptance of being thin by focusing on unrealistic body images which causes them to have lower self esteem and are more likely to fall prey to eating disorders, The media has a dangerous influence on the women’s health in the United States.

    Read More

  • Should Performance-Enhancing Drugs Be Banned?

    1125 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many Athletes are willing to do whatever it takes to become a professional. One of the easiest ways to enhance natural ability is through performance-enhancing drugs or, PEDs. PEDs are substances used by athletes to increase their performance. The use of PEDs in athletic competition can date back to ancient Greece. Athletes use PEDs to run faster, jump higher and recover at an increased pace. Many athletes are pressured into using PEDs by coaches or managers and are not thoroughly educated the harmful health issues that can come along with taking performance-enhancing drugs. A rising issue is if performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports. I believe that in any professional sport, the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes should continue to be banned because this rule will help to keep athletes from abusing these harmful drugs.

    Read More

  • Steroid Use By Athletes Should be Banned

    2039 Words  | 5 Pages

    Steroids became an option to athletes in the Olympics and other major sporting events during the 1950’s. But this use of steroids among athletes only became widely apparent when Canadian sprint runner Ben Johnson tested positive for steroid use after winning the gold medal for the one hundred-meter dash during the 1988 Olympics (Francis, 45). Now a skinny fifteen-year-old can just walk down to the local gym and find people who either sell or know how to get in contact with those who sell the drug that will make him envious of his friends. Steroids are an attractive drug. While steroids seem harmless to the unaware user, they can have a risky effect. Most of the time whether the users are new or experienced, they do not know the dangerous consequences steroids can have on their bodies and their minds. Though steroids cause a relatively insignificant number of deaths in our society, the banning of steroids is justified because steroids have a lot of side effects not known to the uninformed user.

    Read More

  • Should Performance Enhancing Drugs Be Legalized In Professional Sports?

    1288 Words  | 3 Pages

    06 Jan. 2014. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470510544.ch70/summary>. Haugen, Kjetil K. "Why We Shouldn’t Allow Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sport." Academia.edu. Academia.edu, 1 Apr. 2011.

    Read More

  • Media – the Negative Influence on Females

    1249 Words  | 3 Pages

    The media has promoted a dominant view of how people should perceive beauty, and what consists of perfection in beauty. According to Dr. Karin Jasper, the media have women encouraging them to be concerned with their outward appearance and how others perceive them by surrounding everyone with the ideal female beauty. (Jasper, 2000) Body image has become a particular concern for young girls and women, often females work diligently to attain the perfect body image advertised in mass media. (Gibbs, 2010) When women are not able to obtain their ideal body goal, many develop negative feelings and become self-conscious about their bodies. Conversely, it is not possible for someone to look like a model in ads, someone without blemishes, scars, or pours. Another study conducted in 2012 showed contemporary media and culture has defined a women’s social desirability in terms of their bodies. For females, this has often resulted in comparing themselves to bodies shown in advertisements, commercials, magazines, etc. however not all body

    Read More

  • Doping, Athletes and Sports

    905 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...thlete under twenty-four hour surveillance is neither feasible nor lawful. Only when there are more accurate tests can the enforcement of drug rules and regulations be possible. As more sophisticated tests come to market, fewer drugs will escape detection. With the limited ability of current techniques to catch athletes red-handed, pressure must be put on the athletic community to reject doping. Until the athletic community refuses doping as a means to an end, little can be done to stop it from happening.

    Read More

  • Cheating in Sports

    1409 Words  | 3 Pages

    Drug use in sports is considered cheating. Doping has many historical backgrounds, but now it is on a larger scale in order to maximiz...

    Read More

More about The Impact of Performance Enhancing Drugs on Sports

Open Document