Science policy in sports. It sounds like a pretty good combination until you actually get into the details, and then it gets scary. Arthur Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, had a great op-ed in Newsday yesterday on technology and the elite athlete. Here is an excerpt:

“So what are we going to say when the archer, the chess master, the competitive marksman, the Nascar driver or the women’s professional golfer says, “If I take these same drugs I just might get enough of an edge to move ahead of my competition”? Throughout the 1990s when home runs were flying out of baseball stadiums, launched by players who obviously were using steroids, when professional football linemen got huge, when track and field records continued to fall, not much in the way of protest was heard. Americans are in love with those who take risks to break a record, or one another’s bones, in the name of sport. Nor do Americans gripe when we show up at the Olympics with our athletes who have the best training, superb diets, and top-flight equipment and whomp the tar out of athletes from poor nations, some of whom seem to have shown up just to get a decent meal. We are used to employing science to our advantage when it comes to sports, so why should we draw the line at genetic engineering or new miracle pills? There is nothing about the reaction to Rafael Palmeiro’s downfall that indicates we are ready to deal with the fundamental ethical question raised by his use of steroids – how can we draw the line when it comes to enhancement? Is the point of sport to see what human beings can do without aid of any sort in fair competition? If so, we may need to close the training facilities and cut back on what dietitians and trainers are allowed to do. But if the point of sports is to test the limits of human performance, then we had better get ready to add genetic engineers and a bevy of pharmacologists to the hordes of specialists now working with elite athletes from elementary school to the pros. There is no right answer to what the point of sport is. But Rafael Palmeiro has made it a question no one who cares about sports can avoid.”

A New York Times article on records in sports may be and indication where we are headed:


“On Thursday night, members of the Society for American Baseball Research records committee, which has no relationship with Major League Baseball, reconciled their feelings and agreed that little could or should be done to denote any player’s use of illegal steroids. Members cited how many artificial factors – like smaller ballparks, harder bats, smaller strike zones, legitimate weight-training and, yes, fielders wearing gloves – have affected statistics since the days of Alexander Cartwright. Determining how a player may have benefited from steroids, they said, would be a foolish exercise, particularly with no effort to revise the totals of players like Cash, Ford and Roe.”

Caplan is right, this is an issue that has to be dealt with somehow, but where in sports, if anywhere, do we draw a line between allowed human improvements and those that are disallowed? And who gets to decide?