Analytics

August 15, 2007

Nature magazine defends the right to take risks

In a sensible editorial Nature advocates lifting the bans on drug enhancement in sport.
[Drug enhancement] will carry risks [...]. But adults should be allowed to take risks [...].
Taking risks is what freedom is about.

3 comments:

  1. I must disagree.

    Everyone is free to do whatever except in case of compromising others freedom.That's law about.

    But, sport is another thing. Competition has be fair.If it is not it has absolutely no sense. Imagine no rules about doping: one get drugged and the other in order to compete is 'obligated' to do so. Result: sport looses quality as quality is not shown at the practicing time.

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  2. I understand your point. You prefer sport competitions without drugs. No problem. There could be non-drug tournaments, or even entire sports, for spectators like you, and drug-enhanced sports for spectators who prefer otherwise. What we now have is a general anti-drug political climate that generates, in the words of Nature, a "penumbra of doubt and cynicism" over many sports.

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  3. Drug-enhanced sports mean teams, or sponsors, or just any trainer or agent, who are earning money thanks to athletes who take drugs to make better performances in competition... I think, without reading Nature's editorial, that believing an athlete (from for example 18 to xx y.o., I mean maybe too young) is confident enough to know the risk he/she is taking, is also an exercise of "doubt and cynicism". Can really a sportsman control his or her use of drugs? Won't them follow the guide of the people who makes money? You can't trust in them with the economic awards given in competitions...
    You must put limits, maybe only to avoid tragical situations on sport events due to an excess of drugs, and these limits are comparable to the limit drugs-no drugs...
    So if in the end it must be certain control, I think it worths making sports something sane and make and effort to create only sportsman, not drug-enhanced sportsman and non-drug-enhanced sportsman...
    Some spectators maybe won't, but public health will grate me.

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