Thoughts on Performance Enhancing Drugs

I just listened to a podcast where Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman discussed the sport's guys recent article on performance enhancing drugs (PEDs).  I recommend you listen to the podcast.

Here are my initial thoughts on the subject.

Everything is a PED.
Steriods, Human growth hormone (HGH), and blood doping are things that give athletes the ability to perform better.  The same goes for good food, lots of sleep, and practice.  So why are the items in the first list illegal (in some sports) and not the items in the second list?

You might argue that steroids and other PEDs are illegal because they have some bad side effects.  This is true.  Of course, the side effects might be worth it - especially if being a professional athlete is your only marketable job skill.  Taking steriods may allow an athlete to earn enough money to have insurance for the rest of his life, which would be good for your health.

And really, if side effects are your only concern, one day someone will invent drugs that enhance your performance without any known side effect.  Will that be OK?

Testing does not work.
The problem with testing is that some people will be intimidated by the testing and will stop taking PEDs, while others will continue taking PEDs, trick the tests and pass.  This is what happened with Lance Armstrong.  Despite being tested, Lance continued to take drugs while his peers stopped taking drugs.  The tests enabled him to get an unfair advantage.  If there weren't any tests, presumably all the competitors would take PEDS, and that would be fair.  All tests are imperfect.  There will always be loopholes and someone will always get away with cheating.

What can we do?
So far, the strategy for combating PEDs is with black-lists.  The rules in a given sport state: You cannot take steroids, cannot use HGH, cannot dope your blood, etc ... This type of list will always be incomplete.  You can never include every drug that can possibly give someone an unfair advantage.  Someone will always be ahead of the times and will figure out a new way to get stronger or faster.  Eventually, everyone else will also do it, or it will be banned later.  During the interim, someone had an unfair edge.

The better strategy should be to create a white list.  Athletes can only eat apples, bread, chicken, etc ... and these are all supplied by the NBA or NFL or whoever.  You can also only take advil, pepto bismol and a handful of pre-determined drugs.  If you do anything more, say take powerful pain killers, you will be suspended or expelled from the league.

Can a white-list of approved foods and drugs work?
Not really. There's no way we could regulate the intake of food of all athletes in the world.  I think the only way this could work is if all athletes in a league were forced to live in some bubble.  We'd tape them 24 hours a day to ensure that they aren't cheating.

Professional sports would become something akin to survivor.  Sports, like any reality show, is a game with a predefined set of rules.  Maybe the line between professional sports and reality shows like survivor will disappear.  Dare I say, can survivor be the sport of the future?

The problem with my idea.

The problem with putting all athletes in a bubble is that we wouldn't know who gets to go into the bubble.  We can't just put the best athletes in, because we don't know if they've been taking PEDs or not.