PED Debate

The Debate

• The debate here is between two Oxford philosophers, Julian Savulescu and John Devine with Roger Crisp as moderator.
• The proposition they debating is “Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sport”.
• Savulescu is pro, Devine anti.

Savulescu’s position

• “We can try to ratchet up the war on doping. But this will fail, as the war on all victimless crimes involving personal advantage have failed (look at the war on alcohol, drugs and prostitution). Or we can regulate the use of performance-enhancing drugs.”
• So the idea is that completely banning PEDs will fail. But Savulescu is advocating for some rules.
• “A rational, realistic approach to doping would be to allow safe performance-enhancing drugs which are consistent with the spirit of a particular sport, and to focus on evaluating athletes' health.”
• So PEDs that are allowed should be safe.

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Savulescu’s position

• ”Some interventions would change the nature of a sport, like creating webbed hands and feet in swimming, and should be banned on those grounds. But the use of drugs to increase endurance is a part of sport’s history.”
• But also PEDs that are allowed should be consistent with the historical nature of the sport.
• We should be comfortable with changing the rules of the sport: “The rules of a sport are not God-given.”

Savulescu’s position

• He gives 4 (or 5) criteria that rules of sports should follow:
• (1) they define the nature of a particular display of physical excellence;
• (2) create conditions for fair competition;
• (3) protect health;
• (4) provide a spectacle.
• “Also, any rule must be enforceable. The current zero tolerance to drugs fails on the last three grounds and is unenforceable.”

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Savulescu’s position

• “What is ruining sport is cheating. But cheating can be reduced by changing the rules. Cheating can be better reduced by allowing drugs rather than banning them.”
• Is this a good reaction to PED use?

Devine’s Position

• “Rules in sport are designed in part so that success can be achieved only by competitors who display certain excellences of body, mind and will. Practices which impair the display of these excellences should be prohibited.”
• The idea is that PEDs undermine the aim of sport. It’s like using a stepladder in the high jump.
• There are two ways in which PEDs can undermine the aim:
• (1) By preventing a relevant excellence from being displayed at all.
• (2) By elevating one type of excellence to an unwarranted level of importance.

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Devine’s Position

For example, a drug which takes away your fear would undermine the display of the relevant excellences in e.g. boxing and football – the player would not display their courage.

Or in tennis in the 1990s rackets and courts developed so that having a powerful serve had too big a role. So the rules were tweaked.

“Lifting the ban on doping promises to unduly elevate in importance the capacity to metabolise these substances.” (Is that already true in some sports?)

“What is at stake in this debate is not just the health of our athletes or the fairness of competition but the very purpose of sport.” So it’s not just about preventing cheating.

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Crisp’s summary

Both our participants see part of that function as to exemplify human excellence.

“But while Savulescu suggests that such excellence can itself be promoted through the use of drugs (allowing one to run faster, for example), Devine believes drugs can prevent the development of certain excellences (such as the courage of rugby players, for example).”

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Cheating and allowing PEDs

Savulescu accepts that the problem of cheating will still arise on his view, because he accepts that there should be rules and so some PEDs disallowed.

But he claims, by heavily relaxing the rules we will reduce the problem:

“But by creating an open market to compete with the black market, you open the possibility of narrowing the advantage gap. The difference between safe steroid and unsafe steroid may be less than the difference between nothing and current steroids.”

Devine thinks this is capitulating in the face of cheating (and further, will not prevent cheating).

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Cheating and allowing PEDs

Savulescu thinks some types of cheating will be completely stopped though.

‘Physiology provides the performance advantage. So if we measure physiology, and not how it was caused, we stand a much better eliminating or reducing cheating.’

What are the implications of this idea? Does it set a limit to how good athletes can be?

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Balancing Excellences

• But Devine’s main criticism of Savulescu isn’t about cheating, it’s the idea that PEDs would undermine the balance of excellences.
• Savulescu thinks that some drugs will not do that. It’s not totally clear how Devine responds.
• He says that `The introduction of doping would bring to the fore the excellences of the pharmacist but these are not sporting excellences.’ But doesn’t this same reasoning apply much more widely?

Crisp notes that both Savulescu and Devine don’t take the most extreme positions possible.

I’ll let you discuss in sections who won the debate.