*Bésame Mucho apologies to Jimmy Dorsey, the ghosts of all Dorsey Brothers past, and all Dorseys yet to be, pre-emptiedly, even - and Mick Jones and the ever-Clashing ghost of Joe Strummer As we bow in silent tribute to the noble ghosts of Olympics past, whose record-setting deeds among nations united in the pursuit of athletic excellence they enacted but arms' length from the political hatreds setting the world outside ablaze unto ash, let us not forget the stirring example of Sergei Akmudov. In 1988, post-Reykjavik-summit, all the world's eyes were on the brave Soviet weightlifter as he attempted, at the first All-Drug Olympics (video)- held in Bogota, Colombia (transcript)- to set his brawny shoulder against the waning of the arms race in demonstrating the undying verities of peace through strength, though the gods of historical necessity tear him limb from limb: And though brave Sergei, forearmed indeed for one brief streaming moment - if not, alas, forewarned - has gone to his eternal reward in that Goldest of Gyms atop the celestial penthouse, his example found a lonely champion today, twenty years on, in John Tierney of
FINDINGS By JOHN TIERNEY What if we let athletes do whatever they wanted to excel?
Viktor Koen ...After enough “scandals,” the amateur myth eventually died of its own absurdity. The natural myth is still alive in Beijing, but it’s becoming so far-fetched — and potentially dangerous — that some scientists and ethicists would like to abandon it, too. ...The journal Nature, in an editorial in the current issue, complains that “antidoping authorities have fostered a sporting culture of suspicion, secrecy and fear” by relying on unscientifically calibrated tests, like the unreliable test for synthetic testosterone that cost Floyd Landis his 2006 Tour de France victory. Even if the authorities manage to correct their tests, they can’t possibly keep up with the accelerating advances in biology. Some athletes are already considering new drugs like Aicar and GW1516, which made news recently when researchers at the Salk Institute used them to quickly turn couch-potato mice into treadmill champions with new, strong muscles. ...The authorities will have even less of a chance of catching athletes who move beyond drugs and hormones to “gene doping” — inserting genes in their DNA that could increase strength and endurance without leaving telltale chemicals in the bloodstream. There’s no proof that this would work, but that won’t stop competitors. As Science News reported, a track coach in Germany was caught looking for Repoxygen, an experimental virus used to insert a gene into DNA. So what we have now is not a level playing field. The system punishes some innocent athletes and rewards others with the savvy and the connections not to get caught. The more that the authorities crack down on known forms of enhancement, the more incentive athletes have to experiment with new ones — and to get their advice from black-market dealers instead of doctors. If athletes didn’t have to cheat to win, they and society would be better off, says Bengt Kayser, the director of a sports medicine institute at the University of Geneva. In a 2005 article in The Lancet, he and two bioethicists argued that legalizing doping would “encourage more sensible, informed use of drugs in amateur sport, leading to an overall decline in the rate of health problems associated with doping.” In the British Medical Journal last month, more than 30 scholars signed a statement supporting an article co-authored by Dr. Kayser calling the current system a failure that needs to be changed. The article also criticized the medical authorities for undermining their credibility with “prophylactic lies” that exaggerate the dangers of drugs like anabolic steroids based “on scant evidence tainted by a misguided moralistic motivation to protect sports.” ...the popular fear of steroid use by adults is based in large part on a few sensationalized cases, like the news articles blaming steroids for the fatal brain tumor of Lyle Alzado, the former football player. “You’d be on firmer scientific ground blaming his brain cancer on beer drinking,” said Norman Fost, a professor of pediatrics and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. “The claims of the common fatal or irreversible harms of anabolic steroids are without any medical foundation. There’s no reason to think the risk of injury or death is as high as the risk from simply playing sports like football or baseball.” It’s possible, of course, that gene doping or other techniques could turn out to be much riskier. But is that a reason to ban them? Society has always allowed explorers and adventurers to take risks in exchange for glory. The climbers who died on K2 this month ascended it knowing that one climber dies for every four who scale it. If elite adult athletes were allowed to push the limits of human performance in return for glory, they might point the way for lesser mortals to coax more out of their bodies. If a 50-year-old sprinter could figure out how to run as fast as her 25-year-old self, that could be useful to aging weekend warriors — or any aging couch potato. I’d like to see what would happen if someone started a new anything-goes competition for athletes over 25. If you have any ideas for how to run it or what to call it — MaxMatch? UltraSports? Mutant Games? — submit them at nytimes.com/tierneylab. Maybe fans would object to these “unnatural” athletes. But maybe not. The fans, after all, include people with laser-corrected eyes, chemically whitened teeth and surgically enhanced anatomies. Not to mention the pharmacopeia coursing through our veins. We all know the body can be improved. We all know Olympic athletes have the highest-functioning bodies in the world. They can call themselves natural, just as they used to call themselves amateurs, but at some point that claim may seem the most unnatural thing of all.
Yeah, Baby!
New Michelin man is healthier, stronger, he's quit smoking, he cares about the environment, and he "lasts 25% longer." Congrats! - Rocket Science Group blog Bookmark/Search this post with: |
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, whose latest "Findings" column in the paper's Science section hails the Promethean promise of once and future Olympians rendered not just enhanced in fleet and might by the usual alchemy of punishing training regimens, but defying the mightiest of gods themselves in the ungodliest of All-Chemy contests (cabled to the home screen not a minute too soon, one hopes, by the good folks at Chemcast); those of us who find the War on Athletic Drugs as counterproductive in unintended consequences worse than the "scourge" it pretends to cure as its lay counterpart, cheer Tierney 
as he tears Swiftly round the final stretch 
of his modest proposals (see also Tierney's allied blog post, and prize-awarding contest, on 
, Breakfast of such immortal Champions as John Belushi 
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