Episode 65: Julian Savulescu discusses doping in sports
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What is the central question about doping that the episode begins with?
Hey, Matt Teichman here from Elucidations. Before we get going today, I just thought I'd ask if you're a fan of the show to maybe go to our iTunes page and leave a rating and a review, and that way more people can discover it. All right, thanks.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Teichman.
And I'm Emily Dupree.
With us today is Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Uehiro Center for Practical Ethics. And he's here to talk to us about doping in sports. Julian Savulescu, welcome. Hello. So today's topic doesn't really need that much introduction, I guess. The big question would be doping, yay or nay? Should professional athletes be allowed to take performance-enhancing drugs?
Well, from an ethical point of view, many people believe that it's immoral or wrong for athletes to take performance-enhancing drugs. And on one level, that's absolutely correct. I mean, they're cheating, they're breaking the rules and they're getting an unfair advantage. But I think a more interesting question is, is there something unethical about allowing performance-enhancing drugs in sport? And here I think the answer is much less clear than many people believe. And there are good reasons, in fact, to change the rules to allow what I've called physiological doping. So the first reason that we should at least think about the ethics of a doped form of sport is that it's pretty obvious that the current zero tolerance approach to performance enhancing drugs has failed.
Lance Armstrong is the most spectacular example. But in fact, you know, there are many, many other cases. Doping continues to be rife in cycling. Recently, a number of Jamaican sprinters were found to be doping. In fact, out of the only 10 men to have ever run faster than 9.8 seconds, eight of them have been shown to be doping already. So it seems like we've reached the limit of human performance in terms of sprinting, and the performances that you see are really performance-assisted. So the first reason is that the ban on doping is failing. But the second more important reason is that by having a zero tolerance ban, you're actually creating an unsafe environment for athletes. because there's no supervision of what they're doing.
You increase unfairness because those athletes that are able to sidestep the rules gain an unfair advantage. And of course, you're ruining the spectacle of sport. I mean, people no longer know whether their favourite tennis player is doping or not. And in fact, we could address those problems by having regulated access to performance enhancement. What do I mean by that? Well, you really need to understand the science behind current doping because many people have in their minds the sort of East German women who were given massive doses of testosterone and in fact some even changed their sexes. That was an incredibly dangerous, super physiological administration of hormones. And that's not what athletes are doing today.
What they're doing is moving within the normal range. And it's an obvious feature of human beings that they all differ. No one is exactly the same as anyone else. So they differ in the level of red blood cells they have. They differ in the level of growth hormone. They differ in the level of testosterone. And what the current rules are trying to catch are people moving within that physiological range. The easiest to comprehend example is red blood cells.
Why does Savulescu argue that the current zero‑tolerance ban on doping has failed?
The more red blood cells you have, the more oxygen you carry, the greater your endurance. Now, there's a distribution, a normal distribution between, say, 40 and 52 for men. And the more red blood cells you naturally carry, the greater your advantage. Now, if you move from, say, a red blood cell level where 45% of your blood is red blood cells to one where it's 50%, you've got a substantial performance advantage. And what authorities like the World Anti-Doping Agency are trying to work out is if somebody has a hematocrit, a percentage of red blood cells that's 50%, is that normal for them?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central question about doping that the episode begins with?
0:00–4:11
2
Why does Savulescu argue that the current zero‑tolerance ban on doping has failed?
4:11–9:46
3
How does the concept of “physiological doping” differ from traditional performance‑enhancing drugs?
9:46–14:45
4
What safe, enforceable limits does Savulescu propose for regulated doping in sport?
14:45–19:08
5
How do consequentialist and deontological ethics shape the debate over allowing doping?
19:08–24:29
6
Is creating separate “doped” and “undoped” leagues a viable solution to doping problems?
24:29–29:42
7
How might regulated doping affect transgender and intersex athletes in competition?
29:42–35:03
8
What conclusions does the conversation reach about the future of doping regulation?
35:03–39:03
Speakers
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