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Performance Enhancement through Biotechnology Has No Place in Sports
Thesis Statement: Athletes who use any type of biotechnology give themselves an unfair advantage and disrupt the sense of fair play, and they should be banned from competition.
The debates over athletes’ using substances that enhance their performance are continually becoming intricate, with biotechnology a good example being gene therapy becoming a reality.
Various ways of boosting performance by athletes’ are readily available
It is upon the organizations that control sports to make a decision on what is to be given priority in sports.
Display body fitness that develops through handwork
Or allows athletes’ to get a victory at all costs
Sports competition, despite being about winning, the means by which an athlete wins is important
Studies have been carried out on practices that are likely to influence the genetic code of an athlete.
The techniques are likely to;
Help the sportsman in the building of strong muscles
Increase the sportsman’s endurance
In the search for a cure for illnesses like Parkinson’s as well as muscular dystrophy, it has been found by researchers that a combining gene manipulation and exercise can by thirty-five percent increase leg muscles (Lamb, 13).
Such manipulations are developments for social suffering from muscular illnesses.
For healthy players, that can be interpreted to give the meaning of new records worldwide in sports are a result of increased speed and endurance.
The question that needs to be answered is, new world records come at what cost to athletic competition integrity?
The International Olympic Committee’s World Anti-Doping Agency has become startled by the likely adverse implications of new gene technology on competition in athletic.
The Anti-Doping Agency has barred the usage of gene therapies in addition to advising researchers to come up with a test that can detect genetic alteration (Lamb, 13).
There is some bioethics that argues that performance enhancement in athletics is unavoidable as well as a suitable competition feature.
Dr. Andy Miah, a supporter of regulation in the use of gene treatments in sporting, claims that the impression of a naturally impeccable sportsperson is idealistic nonsense. According to Miah, an athlete attains anything he/she wants through all means. This includes:
Technology
Sponsorship
Support
He argues that athletes’ looming turns to genetic manipulation as just a continuation of the way in which sports works, allowing human beings to make performance more extraordinary (Rudebeck).
His consent of bizarre performances as the aim of competition mirrors the culture’s tendency of demanding and rewarding new levels of athletic accomplishment.
The challenge is that attainment has been progressively resulting from high-tech and biological interference other than hard work as should be.
Some years back, better equipment that has nothing to do with gene modification has made it possible for sportspersons to record unthinkable achievements. This includes the utilization of fiberglass poles and aerodynamic bicycles
It is the responsibility of athletes of putting physical determination of exercise and training
Must enhance their skills in gloomy areas of legal and illegal drug use (Jenkins, 11)
There is a significant distinction between the alteration of the body and the usage of state-of-the-art equipment.
Athletes that utilize medical tech to modify their bodies in most of the cases go beyond the hard work of working out by taking the power of machines and thus become lazy.
New records that are set by gene alteration, the opportunity of perceiving sports as a spectacle of human effort are lost.
People are left admiring scientific advances, not knowing that it has a slight relation to the custom of athletic that supports fair play.
The tradition of fair play has, for a long time, been used to define athletic competition.
Sports bank on equivalent environments to all the competitors and thus ensuring fair play. Regulations demand the same equipment to referees who objectively use the rules to the competitors.
If there is a violation of the rules that assure mutual playing ground, both audiences and competitors are derived comprehensively based on comparison to make a judgment of athletics effort and achievement.
When main league baseball guidelines call for solid-wood bats, an athlete who utilizes corked bat boost his heating statistics at the expense sportsmen who use regulation equipment.
For instance, when Ben Johnson tested positive for the use of steroids after he had set a new world record in the 1988 Olympics in a 100-meter race, his “attainment” devaluated the powerful training that had been undergone by his competitors preparing for the competition.
The response of the International Olympic Committee was stripping his medal as well as his world record.
In a similar way, sportsmen who use gene therapy in the modification of their bodies with the aim of enhancing their performance basically creates an uneven playing ground.
Allowing athletes to modify their bodies through biotechnology is also likely to dispense with the human element altogether.
Having said that, it is clear that instead of watching a running completion to see the fastest athlete, we might just as well be watching sprinter mounts bikes and race across the finishing line.
The Illogicality of this kind of example, however, implies the damage that allowing of gene therapies will have done to sporting.
The chair of the ethics advisory panel for the World Anti-Doping Agency, Thomas Murray, points out that he has expectations, although not too positive, of an alternative future.
A future whereby people will find the great importance of sports.
Sports that are characterized by natural abilities and virtues and not biotechnology (Jenkins, 11).
In conclusion, athletes who apply any type of biotechnology are unfairly advantaged and interrupt the act of fair play. Thus, they should be barred from sports competition unless;
Sports organization are considering establishing distinct sporting competitions as well as leagues;
For sportsmen who have chosen biotechnological boost
Another sporting event has opted to keep their bodies natural.
It is our responsibility to ask our athletes to astonish us less with strange performance and more with a reward of their hard work.
Works Cited
Jenkins, Sally. “The First Item in a Pandora’s Box of Moral Ambiguities.” Washington Post 4 Dec. 2004: 11. Print.
Lamb, Gregory M. “Will Gene-Altered Athletes Kill Sports?” Christian Science Monitor 23 Aug. 2004: 12-13. Print.
Rudebeck, Clare. “The Eyes Have It.” Independent [London].Independent News and Media, 27 Apr. 2005. Web.